[nukkad] Gujarat polls: The assertion of entrepreneurs

["Gireesh Dixit" <>]

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http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1142702
Gujarat polls: The assertion of entrepreneurs
Prof R Vaidyanathan
Wednesday, January 02, 2008  03:17 IST
The community wants its rightful place in national politics, and will get it
The election results of Gujarat have been analysed by the losers, namely the 
poll forecasters and other assorted media experts, most of whom had egg on 
their face. The real loser, namely the Congress Party, as usual declared 
victory for Sonia and Rahul. Then there was a cacophony of voices regarding
inane things like Hindutva/ Moditva, etc.
Most of the analysis missed out an important point - that Gujarat is asserting 
and claiming its well-deserved role in the national scheme of things. Gujarat 
has the most entrepreneurial and risk-taking group of communities and 
individuals, with a Diaspora spread far and wide, in East Africa, Europe,
USA and East Indies. In post-Independence India, their tallest leader, Sardar 
Vallabhbhai Patel was not given much importance -in a sense, he lost the prime 
minister's chair due to Gandhi's decision regarding Nehru. Not many national 
schemes/ monuments are named after him and another leader from
that state, Morarji Desai, is completely forgotten.
The contribution of Gujarat to our economy is mind boggling and it continued 
with its entrepreneurship even during the Nehruvian era of license quota-raj. 
But, unfortunately, in the peak planning era of the fifties and the sixties, 
policy formulation was undertaken by experts who can be broadly
classified as liberal and vaguely progressive. A significant number of them 
belonged to the Bengal province. The Mahalonobis model adopted during the 
Second Five Year Plan gave a boost to their ideas and ideology. We find that 
very few experts from the western part of India, particularly Gujarat,
were involved in the economic and planning affairs of our country during that 
time.
This got strengthened in the post-Nurul Hasan period - he was education 
minister in the early seventies - wherein most of the social science 
institutions were filled with progressives of various hues.
Entrepreneurship was derided and treated with contempt. It was considered as 
"bania mentality" and the by-now infamous Nehruvian thunder of "hang the 
traders from the nearest lamp post" became a part of intellectual folklore. 
Indian thinking and worldview was appropriated by a small but vociferous
group of progressives who cheered re-naming Dharamtala in central Calcutta as 
Lenin Sarani. Risk-taking was considered as blasphemy and getting government 
jobs became the ultimate human achievement.
Then came the major impetus in the form of liberalisation, after the 
catastrophic foreign exchange crisis of the early nineties. Before that, the 
ultimate Gujarati businessman and risk-taker, Dhirubhai Ambani, had shown that 
the government was extortionist and hence, rather than bend rules,
entrepreneurs needed to formulate government rules to get ahead in business. 
That is a major breakthrough in entrepreneurship in our country. Coupled with 
liberalisation, this slowly brought about the decline of the progressives.
It is another thing that many children of these arm chair revolutionaries of 
the sixties and seventies have since graduated from management schools to enter 
investment banking and other fields with six-figure monthly salaries.
But the press and the electronic media still have the "progressive boomer" 
generation babies who cannot comprehend what is taking place. It is the 
assertion of the "bania" or entrepreneur against the State. Ironically, it is 
the Centre which has been putting shackles on these risk-takers, for they
also want a place in the high table of politics, not just business.
This assertion of Gujarat has to be distinguished from the complaints of say 
West Bengal. West Bengal has a huge grievance industry that believes it was 
wrong on the part of the British to shift the capital from Calcutta to Delhi. 
The grievance industry talks about price equalisation, imperialism,
etc. In other words, Bengal asserts that all its problems are due to - 
imaginary or real - enemies who are outside the state, when it has itself 
destroyed all entrepreneurship in chemical/ engineering and computer 
industries, where it was a leader in the forties and fifties.
The assertion of Gujarat is different. It is based on achievements rather than 
grievances. It wants its rightful place in the Delhi durbar since it has been 
growing in double digits, has spectacular achievements on the electricity and 
water fronts, and is the only state with courage to make stealing
electricity a criminal offence. In a sense, the assertion of Gujarat is a 
logical culmination of the process of liberalisation and the emerging global 
entrepreneurship of Indians. The idiom and the contours of the debate are 
changing from that of caste, socialism and imperialism to water,
electricity and small business. The three pillars - non-alignment, socialism 
and secularism - of the Nehruvian era, which are the prime mantra of the 
progressives, are all dead.
Gujarat did not talk the language of caste and it is a tectonic change from the 
identity politics so much the favourite of the progressives. Gujarat is 
enthusiastic and does not want to be ignored in this era of business and 
risk-taking. Gujarat wants to occupy its role in national politics. That is
the message this election has served.
When the economy liberalises and business flourishes, it is but natural that 
entrepreneurs would like a major role in running the affairs of the country. 
The two-sector socialistic planning model of the fifties handed over political 
power to one group and now the liberalised,
entrepreneur-worshipping economy will give importance to another set of people, 
who will occupy the Delhi chairs. Nothing to be surprised.
R Vaidyanathan
Professor of Finance & Control, IIM-Bangalore
Views are personal. Feedback may be mailed to vaidya@iimb.ernet.in.



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