One of the most tragic emblems of political failure is the suicides in rural India. It's modern India's greatest shame. But if you think this year's budget will make things better for the rural poor, you are mistaken. Rural India does not exist in isolation. You cannot wake up one fine morning and make us tax payers in urban India pay for the political mistakes that have made farming a laggard sector. If industry can set such a scorching pace, there's no reason why agricultural growth should be so stagnant. Yet the budget succumbs to populism and ignores success to reward failure. Industry, which has doubled its contribution to the national exchequer, gets nothing in return. Agriculture, which is trundling along at a miserable growth rate, picks up all the loot.
The funny thing is we never learn. We keep repeating our mistakes. This year again, as the nation readies for its next general election, Rs 60,000 crore of tax payers' money has been set aside for the banks to write off rural debt when we all know that the rural poor (like the urban poor) are not even eligible for such debt. It would be simpler for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a really poor farmer to walk into a bank, any bank, and get a loan. They are, as they have always been, victims of cruel, callous, unforgiving money lenders who drive them to penury and suicide.
Is that going to change by writing off this Rs 60,000 crore? Nah. Maybe a few poor farmers could gain from this massive exercise in fiscal profligacy but by and large the vast majority of the rural poor will get no relief, no succour unless real things are done to improve their lot. Land reforms perhaps, to begin with. It will cost much less. Charity, on the other hand, is always iniquitous. What we need therefore is change. Fundamental change in the way we treat the poor, both rural and urban. In fact, the urban poor is largely the rural poor who have migrated from one set of miseries to another. Selling them dreams in an election year may be politically smart but that's not gonna change anything.
Cruel as it may sound, no nation can afford to have two sets of morality. You cannot punish those who have been regularly paying off their bank debts by allowing those who have defaulted to get away. It sends a wrong message. Just as it sends a wrong message when the Government announces amnesty schemes for tax dodgers. It clearly signals that the State is ready to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing if it believes it can politically exploit it. Just as every honest tax payer resents a black money amnesty scheme, every farmer who has been regularly and consistently repaying his debt to the bank (often at great personal sacrifice) must be angry to see his defaulting neighbour get away with a generous write off in an election year. Is this what we call the new morality? Or is it just vulgar political expediency masquerading as concern for the downtrodden?
This leads me to my next point. Have you noticed how every political party is jumping on to the bandwagon to claim credit for this stupid idea? In fact, even within the ruling coalition the claimants are many. The Congress started it all by holding a huge farmers' rally in Delhi, where it accused the Vajpayee regime of letting down the rural poor. The CPM, on the other hand, claims this is their idea. The NCP, another fractious ally of the Congress, claims that their leader, Sharad Pawar, the Agriculture Minister, thought this through. Being a Maharashtra based regional party, they are stomping the interiors of the state and claiming all the credit. Meanwhile, every other party, in power or outside, is asserting that they were responsible for this huge largesse about to be distributed. Those in power claim it's their idea. The Opposition claims they forced their hand. But no one is brave enough to stand up and say this is bad economics, bad public policy. In fact, there is serious moral vagrancy here.
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