The New Nation - Internet Edition

Sudhirendar Sharma

It is an imaginative advertisement that unleashes the power of wireless communication. Reliance Communications advertisement on the television uses three distinct frames - majestic snow clad mountain peak, sprawling sea with a swinging boat, vast desert with an insect moving across - to mirror the absence of air, land and water in that order. Nothing is lost, the musical tone forming the background score reassures that there is indeed `network' to proxy for everything else! Like a bikini, this amazing ad conceals more than it reveals. If clean air is not a marketable good with a price then the market places no value on it, the ad seems to suggest! However, if land and sea could fit into the corporate balance sheet the same must be appropriated using the emerging `network' albeit of politicians, bureaucrats and businesses.

From the Tata's controversial mini-car project that has displaced farmers in Singur to the Sethusamundram canal that will run across Ram's mythological bridge at the cost of fishermen's lifesaving catch, the fissure between what is good for `growth' (read `network') at the cost of `people' has been widening by the day. Yet, each of these projects and several upcoming ones being cleared by the `democratically' elected governments across the country (and even in other growing economies in the region) claim big gains for the poor. Despite the fact that doubts about benefits from such projects remain unanswered, bad policy making and insouciant politicians always pull such projects against all odds in India, purportedly to nurture the fledgling `network'.

Skim through the published reports and it would be hard to get a single credible report on the benefits of the Sethusamundram project, the project to dredge sand across the so-called Adam's Bridge in the Gulf of Manner region. Yet, there is unstinted support to the project from powers-that-be in Delhi and in Chennai. One wonders if the Union Shipping Minister and the Tamilnadu Chief Minister have access to information that most others don't or that they haven't read most of what is available in the public domain? It is either a case of hiding strategic information from the public or about making ill-informed decisions on someone's behest, a shameless breach of trust of the public by its elected representatives that may hold the livelihoods and the ecology in the region to ransom!

Politicians may play ignorant to published facts but do the babus (bureaucrats) help doctor such project reports to suit the vested interests? Whether or not they do so, the babus form an important link in the policy-planning process. The critical question is: are they better informed than their political masters? N C Saxena, a widely respected former senior bureaucrat and a member of the National Advisory Council constituted by the UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, considers bureaucrats to be as poorly read, if not worse. According to Saxena, `one would find only three books in the house of an officer of the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) - a railway time table because s/he is always on the move, a film magazine because that is the only book s/he reads, and of course, the civil list - that describes how many in the system are above him.'

Does democratic governance not survive on peoples' faith in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance? Painfully so, even when we are living in a knowledge society where information and knowledge is only a press of a button away. Yet, it is ignorance that wields power. No wonder, as Saxena echoes the widely shared belief among the political and bureaucratic elite, the powers-that-be use the state as an arena where public office is used for private ends. The recent arrest of former Uttar Pradsh Chief Secretary Akhand Pratap Singh, a senior IAS who had tried to escape from the back door of his house only to be caught in Delhi's traffic snarl, is a case in point. Reports indicate that till his retirement the said bureaucrat was being protected (in disproportionate assets case) by his political masters. Amen!

As corporations enter the public arena, the network is not only expanding but getting strengthened too. Conversion of public resources into private goods is exchanging hands faster than ever. Singur and Sethusamundrum reflect the tip of the iceberg.

As neo-liberal economist viewpoint becomes central to political, judicial and executive thought process, street vendors will only get displaced on the pretext of protecting peoples' health as neighborhood shops will face sealing to make way for the glamorous malls. It is heartening that the enlightened few have started challenging judicial decisions which have begun to serve vested interests at the cost of the fundamental ethos of this country - Satyamaiv Jaite Nanratam- that truth will triumph and nothing else!

Need it be said that the recent trend of converting communal assets like land and water into commodities for trade in the capital market in the garb of `growth' (again read `network') will not only be anti-poor in short run but ecologically irreversible in long term too. In a market driven economy the environmental assets will need to be fully incorporated into the market for it (market) to transform ecological assets into marketable goods - generating profits for its stakeholders. Unless the move to bring the earth within the corporate balance sheet gets questioned, the network will only proxy the panch tatva, the five basic elements of air, water, land, fire and sky.