Very often indexes of economic
performance are presented as evidence of people's welfare by state orders. The
gross domestic product (GDP) has been a favourite concept. The figures were
often quoted and used by the officialdom as proof of welfare post 1990s. So when
the GDP moved from 7 to 8 to 9, people are supposed to feel good. More specialized
indexes like the Baseline Profitability Index, of which I talk about, are
available for the present ruling establishment in India. I thought it is
worthwhile putting such figures where they really belong and read them for what
they really indicate.
Couple this with some of the
biggest efforts to manage public relations (PR) one gets the huge scale of
manufactured illusion people must live through. APCO worldwide for instance,
with a record of multi-billion dollar lobbying in United States, promotion of Zionist
conservative networks, with clientele of oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
with track record of promoting climate-change denialists, as well as branding
of Gujarat post riots; have got involved in the PR activities for Indian
central government. There is also tailor made work to promote the present prime
minister.
Increasingly the governmental
apparatus feels a need to wield shields of PR stunts, to ward off any serious doubt.
News and media get overwhelmed by the kudos they churn out for upcoming
projects and restructurings. It is also in such contexts that I feel the need
to try and put in an effort to understand such gimmicks for what they are.
The following perspective
comes in the wake of immense campaigning done for the Atal Mission for
Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) programme for urban
infrastructure and the smart cities programme as envisaged by the central
government in India. Gamuts of corporate developmental indexes are portrayed
as proofs of and logic for the social validity of the aforesaid state
programmes. Recently, as per major print news, India, way down at 6th on
Baseline Profitability Index is now the topper. I do not have the illusion that
people immediately get excited about such number games as much as when the
first gimmicks of GDP growth were advertised as greater human success. Even
then it is interesting to place such ecstatic news items under lens and enquire
into these oft appearing figures.
Before anyone contemplates
becoming loyal believers of the make in India lion deities, it will be
worthwhile thinking a bit into what many of the parameters of achievements are
about. This is a good way of putting them where they belong. This is also a way
of preventing imaginations take wings of wax and flying to the sun. Another way
is to get to the ground and see what the welfarist translations of such figure
games are. The former is what I will try out with the baseline profitability
score the state has 'achieved' as per news. What does it mean when a score of
the kind created by an economist and Foreign Policy commentator Daniel Altman
goes positive? And also how a state hell bent on following a certain trajectory
can use such figures, as the GDPs were once used, to manufacture euphoria and
hero worships.
Here Daniel Altman who created
the index essentially sees how much value an asset has added on once an
investment is made, say in India. The index compares how the local policies of
the state and the local conditions would affect the same investment in other
places. It also asks how the principal and the return on investment will change
as a factor of the place where investments are made. This is the gist.
Thus, at present, on this
comparative scale, "India is the place to start". No doubt that
Daniel Altman knows 'his economics' well; he uses the technique for soccer
league ratings, global economics, and for the baseline index. For instance one
of his favourite ways is to assess the 'worth' of players for billion dollar
club markets or assessment of the relative quality of various soccer leagues
using average age. He likes his comparative strategy. The same applies for
comparing investor scenes. He must also be a good proponent of these
perspectives where he teaches.
Let’s congratulate the
economist, the holy investors and the promoting state structure in India and go
on to see what all of these implies for us, and the much less fortunate
millions who inhabit our places.
Few years back, during the
term of the last government, what happened were sets of catastrophes as a
function of global credit impacts. There were unheard scales of corporate
corruption as well. The crisis of debt markets, the packaging and reselling of
bad debts incurred by financial institutions, was felt everywhere, in varying
scales. The human impact was too much. Millions lost jobs across the world.
This is how fictitious capital (trillions) and volatile finance has clear
material impacts that can only go from bad to worse
Remittance economies for
instance (many in the Americas and a lot more like in Asia where service sector
is predominant) suffered in characteristic ways. If this was actual starvations
in places like Haiti dependent on US remittances, in places like ours, the
worst was still warded a lot off. This
is because the system was yet to be made totally subject to the whims and
fancies of investors and investor capital. Even then we managed to set free
those responsible for the death of thousands in Bhopal. We even promised the
Dow chemicals safe spaces of future investment.
In the last few decades with
the neoliberal turn people witness increasing crisis. But the crisis of
investors gets subsequently solved off locally at human costs. The Kingfishers
can fly their jets and the Monsantos can keep terminating; only the farmers
need to commit suicide.
The new dynamics of urbanization
for instance is one of the ways in which crisis gets solved like this. Thus land
and property markets have to be favourable to investors. Most of the
developments like these are debt financed. But that is just fine! It is a well
known truism that capitalist system is ridden with crisis. Crisis is necessary
for capitalist systems survival. So there are problems all the time and there
are solutions that in turn create a new problem- survival through crisis.
Sorry, we are not talking about humanitarian crisis. That is a essential
component for any kind of capitalist crisis fixation. The political power
centres, once people put them in place through democratic elections, have been taking action to get the system
ready more in favour of the upcoming crisis.
The basic requirement of the
aforesaid system is that it requires growth, no matter what. Never mistake
growth for welfare. This is just the old GDP story; post Manmohanomic-reforms,
of profit generation in new garb. So there is a need to have spaces of competitive
ease across the world. And a place like India that both becomes conducive and
holds perhaps the biggest market of consumers (on or off credit), that means jackpot
(for capitalists, for investors...).
The new game makers and
planners will now tell us that a certain rate of growth is acceptable and
another rate is less so etc. Do not ask who decides these acceptability levels.
Not us for sure! Instead this is the puppet show by a class that has to find
security for the increasing amount of money that is entrusted in different
state spaces. The too much money has to get invested to generate profits.
Banks, for instance, over these years have become lenders (there is hardly an
interest for your savings. Imagine one of those new generation loan monger banks).
The surplus that does not find
its way out is an impending problem in a capitalist order. So games are to be
played, new spaces are to be generated. Wars are one of the favourite games of
superpowers and a kind with catastrophic human consequences. Another method is the
generation of safe spaces for profit generation. The special economic zones and
urban reordering became the state methods post 2000. But things were not quite
professionally managed resulting in some of the state repressions coming out
too much in open. The usual gimmicks of job generation (after depriving
generations of natural and social infrastructure) did not quite work. People
began to read about the people from Niyamgiri threatened by bauxite miners, the
Reddy brothers mining activities, Vedanta, and many others across India.
Millions who voted last time thought they voted for change.
And yes, there is a difference
now. Things are much more professionally managed. So there is a clamp down on organizations
that report on human rights issues. There is a freeze on their funds. Better
spaces for the circulation and generation of profit are getting created through
smart cities: not one or two but hundreds on them, through private
partnerships. If one reads the clauses and provisions, it becomes too clear for
whom are these cities getting ready. There are more gimmicks that resonate
nationalism like the make in India's which gets coupled with labour law
changes. Labour has to be servile and ready to make things cheap. Labour must
not stand in the way of profit. Land laws have to be made more favourable to
any ambani or adani (and more of the class...) who has a plan! So get rid of
the social impact assessments and environmental laws that stand in the way.
Restructure the green tribunals. Do all of these and more and then go across
the world and market the vibrant spaces. A better way is to put the patriotic
tag and ideas like nationalism (Put some desi words in, to act a swadesi
drama). Get in a bit more of media coverage and try to make people good about
all of this.
Get such an order in and then
economists like Altman will score up the country in the index. And if the state
manages either to suppress and keep in place all the human costs incurred
during growth, or account for them as collateral damages, they keep winning the
game over people.
