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print version27 December 2024
That the overwhelming majority of the Indian intelligentsia, the middle class and the ‘Commentariat’, given their general political-moral make-up, should now be singing the praises of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after his demise, is not at all surprising. But the proper evaluation of his record can only come from the progressive Left and this has to be strongly negative.
The only half-way positive aspects of the UPA-I period of governance such as the establishment of the RTI and NREGA programmes were the price Manmohan Singh had to pay to stabilise coalition rule, dependent as he was on the support of the parliamentary Left, until he was able to do the dirty on them towards the end of his first term by winning over outside parties to get the Indo-US Nuclear Deal through. He was also intellectually unprincipled. As the Chairman of the South Commission (1987 to November 1990), a policy think tank headquartered in Geneva and concerned with the needs of the developing world, he was critical of the global turn towards economic neoliberalism. Appointed finance minister under Narasimha Rao in 1991 he had no problems shifting to strong advocacy and pursuit of the policies he had once decried. Politically without any base he knew he had to be, and was, subservient first to Rao and then to Sonia Gandhi.
The BJP did not initiate the turn towards neoliberal economic policies nor that towards a strategic re-alignment with the worst imperialist power the US. They adopted and accelerated these changes in direction. But going beyond the BJP and the right and far-right is the applause by even the so-called liberal intelligentsia and journalists of this economic shift. India has now stood up economically in the world and is on its way to being a major global power. The acceleration in average annual growth rates from what used to be derisively called the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ was the accepted proof of the inauguration of a new era of domestic prosperity for all. Barring a few critical voices, we have been continuously barraged in the media by how wonderful this economic turn has been especially for the poor. The profound falsity of this claim can be provided by one simple piece of factual evidence/data which has never been highlighted in this media, not even it seems by critics. This is the finding provided on the basis of UN accumulated world data that has been analysed by L. Chancel and T. Piketty in “Inequality 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?” [Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 65, No. 1, 2019, Appendices 10 and 11]. It can be summed up as follows.
Annual average real income growth of the bottom 50% of the Indian population was higher in the period 1951-80 than in the period 1980-2015 when the moves towards neoliberal globalisation began and then decisively accelerated in the 1990s under Rao and Manmohan Singh.
The point to be made here is simple. Of course, as incomes accumulate despite the lower rate of annual growth for the bottom half of the population, income measured levels of poverty would decline. But this was happening faster in the earlier period. That is to say, the neoliberal turn has most strongly benefitted the elites and sections of the middle class and their incomes and wealth. No wonder India is now said, income distribution wise, to be among the most unequal societies in the world--- according to Piketty, the second most unequal society after South Africa while also having the third largest number of dollar billionaires, having overtaken Russia on this score. In absolute numbers it has the largest number of people below the internationally accepted poverty line while Indian spending on health, pensions, education and other aspects of public welfare remains at atrociously low levels proportionate to GDP in comparison to most other poor countries. At $86.6 billion in 2023-24, India ranks fourth behind the US, China, Russia in military spending. In the Global Human development index India ranks 134 out of 191 countries in 2023-24.
There are three other ugly aspects of the Manmohan Singh period of rule as PM. He had no hesitation in declaring that enemy number one domestically was Naxalism not Hindutva. The Congress outcast Mani Shankar Aiyar would condemn the Hindutva forces as the biggest threat but not Singh and his cohorts. Any surprise that, then and now, the Congress plays ‘soft Hindutva’? Then there was the Indo-US Nuclear Deal as part of the shift towards not just alignment with Western imperialism, above all the US, but the further consolidation of India as a sub-imperial power. This reality its drum-beaters in academia and the media disguise by calling this behaviour a ‘welcome search for multi-polarity’ when there is no way any government--- BJP or Congress-led --- will ever seriously challenge the US. Lastly, let us not forget that it is in the 2004-2014 period that India became the number one purchaser of arms from Israel; that in 2008 it took Israeli help to set up a Central Monitoring System (CMS) to enable a capacity shift from targeted to mass surveillance. It was in February 2014 before the UPA-II government ended that the first major deal for regularised sending of security and police personnel from India to Israel for the purposes of learning ‘counter-terrorism’, ‘crowd control’ and ‘border management’ was signed.
One would have at least expected the major Indian left parties to be more critical of Manmohan Singh than they have so far shown.
That the overwhelming majority of the Indian intelligentsia, the middle class and the ‘Commentariat’, given their general political-moral make-up, should now be singing the praises of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after his demise, is not at all surprising. But the proper evaluation of his record can only come from the progressive Left and this has to be strongly negative. The only half-way positive aspects of the UPA-I period of governance such as the establishment of the RTI and NREGA programmes were the price Manmohan Singh had to pay to stabilise coalition rule, dependent as he was on the support of the parliamentary Left, until he was able to do the dirty on them towards the end of his first term by winning over outside parties to get the Indo-US Nuclear Deal through. He was also intellectually unprincipled. As the Chairman of the South Commission (1987 to November 1990), a policy think tank headquartered in Geneva and concerned with the needs of the developing world, he was critical of the global turn towards economic neoliberalism. Appointed finance minister under Narasimha Rao in 1991 he had no problems shifting to strong advocacy and pursuit of the policies he had once decried. Politically without any base he knew he had to be, and was, subservient first to Rao and then to Sonia Gandhi.
The BJP did not initiate the turn towards neoliberal economic policies nor that towards a strategic re-alignment with the worst imperialist power the US. They adopted and accelerated these changes in direction. But going beyond the BJP and the right and far-right is the applause by even the so-called liberal intelligentsia and journalists of this economic shift. India has now stood up economically in the world and is on its way to being a major global power. The acceleration in average annual growth rates from what used to be derisively called the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ was the accepted proof of the inauguration of a new era of domestic prosperity for all. Barring a few critical voices, we have been continuously barraged in the media by how wonderful this economic turn has been especially for the poor. The profound falsity of this claim can be provided by one simple piece of factual evidence/data which has never been highlighted in this media, not even it seems by critics. This is the finding provided on the basis of UN accumulated world data that has been analysed by L. Chancel and T. Piketty in “Inequality 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?” [Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 65, No. 1, 2019, Appendices 10 and 11]. It can be summed up as follows.
Annual average real income growth of the bottom 50% of the Indian population was higher in the period 1951-80 than in the period 1980-2015 when the moves towards neoliberal globalisation began and then decisively accelerated in the 1990s under Rao and Manmohan Singh.
The point to be made here is simple. Of course, as incomes accumulate despite the lower rate of annual growth for the bottom half of the population, income measured levels of poverty would decline. But this was happening faster in the earlier period. That is to say, the neoliberal turn has most strongly benefitted the elites and sections of the middle class and their incomes and wealth. No wonder India is now said, income distribution wise, to be among the most unequal societies in the world--- according to Piketty, the second most unequal society after South Africa while also having the third largest number of dollar billionaires, having overtaken Russia on this score. In absolute numbers it has the largest number of people below the internationally accepted poverty line while Indian spending on health, pensions, education and other aspects of public welfare remains at atrociously low levels proportionate to GDP in comparison to most other poor countries. At $86.6 billion in 2023-24, India ranks fourth behind the US, China, Russia in military spending. In the Global Human development index India ranks 134 out of 191 countries in 2023-24.
There are three other ugly aspects of the Manmohan Singh period of rule as PM. He had no hesitation in declaring that enemy number one domestically was Naxalism not Hindutva. The Congress outcast Mani Shankar Aiyar would condemn the Hindutva forces as the biggest threat but not Singh and his cohorts. Any surprise that, then and now, the Congress plays ‘soft Hindutva’? Then there was the Indo-US Nuclear Deal as part of the shift towards not just alignment with Western imperialism, above all the US, but the further consolidation of India as a sub-imperial power. This reality its drum-beaters in academia and the media disguise by calling this behaviour a ‘welcome search for multi-polarity’ when there is no way any government--- BJP or Congress-led --- will ever seriously challenge the US. Lastly, let us not forget that it is in the 2004-2014 period that India became the number one purchaser of arms from Israel; that in 2008 it took Israeli help to set up a Central Monitoring System (CMS) to enable a capacity shift from targeted to mass surveillance. It was in February 2014 before the UPA-II government ended that the first major deal for regularised sending of security and police personnel from India to Israel for the purposes of learning ‘counter-terrorism’, ‘crowd control’ and ‘border management’ was signed.
One would have at least expected the major Indian left parties to be more critical of Manmohan Singh than they have so far shown.
