After
many months of travelling across rural India, I have had the opportunity
last week to sit down in Mumbai and read the papers. I find many
things that are disturbing. I see trends which people had foreseen,
and yet they are happening, and that is even more disturbing. This is
not about things that happen to 'other people', they concern us, our
society, our nation, our earth; they portend the future. It will be
worthwhile to see them.
* * * * *
I gather that the newspapers have now found out that the economy is
in trouble, that the financial system is in a mess:
-
Foreign exchange reserves at 285 billion dollars, just enough to
cover seven months' imports.
-
Rupee crashing vis-a-vis the dollar.
-
Current Account Deficit (net outflow of foreign exchange) now at 4.8
per cent (of GDP), which is alarming, says RBI.
-
Non-stop inflation over the last 18 months, food commodities hit
all-time high.
I remember that in 1991, I saw very similar headlines. This is like
an action replay, except that things are much worse now, because in
the interim period, the nation's economic integrity has been
compromised with structural changes, and large parts of the country
have been mortgaged.
I
also remember that the central characters of 1991 are the same as
today: Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and Montek Ahluwalia. It is my
view that if any one group has to bear the larger blame for the
nation's economic disaster and deep-rooted financial rot, it is this
threesome of PM, FM and Chairman of Planning Commission . They have
wilfully ignored the Indian reality and have instead bowed to the
dictates of the World Bank and the IMF. Since this threesome also
does salaam to Sonia,
and she is the one with the 'remote control', I suppose she is also
answerable for this Gross National Disaster.
Here is another set of headlines that I see: