Quite in contrast to the usual and steady stream of anti-India output we all know emanates from the ingrained bias, condescension and negative propaganda of the western media and Anglo-Saxon academia, this article by Mohamed El-Erian & Michael Spence seems in comparison almost like an, anodyne advisory —- friendly, well-intentioned and cautionary.
There is one passage in this article that strikes me as very extremely insightful given the context of the upcoming General Elections in India next month.
Quote: “On the domestic front, India is on the cusp of an even greater inflow of FDI and portfolio investors. Such capital has many benefits, of course, including job creation, technology transfer, and greater access to cheaper funding.
But as other countries’ experience shows, large inflows require rapid adaptation of policies and policymakers’ mindsets, as well as measures to overcome internal resistance from domestic incumbents. Otherwise, the benefits will be more than offset by the serious threat of macroeconomic instability, severe resource misallocation, excessive risk taking, and corruption”. Unquote
El-Erian & Spence are absolutely correct the next Government to be elected in June 2024 is definitely going to face the huge challenge of “rapid adaptation of policies and policy-makers’ mindsets, as well as measures to overcome internal resistance from domestic incumbents”.
The challenge however can be met and overcome if the Government led by Narendra Modi returns to power with an overwhelming majority of 400+ seats out of 534 in the Lower House and matched as well by a comfortable majority in the Higher House.
Modi of all persons in the country understands the crucial importance of such a steamroller majority without which he knows all efforts to accelerate India’s economic growth story in the next decade will be stalled, even frustrated and maybe sabotaged too by those Mohamed El-Erian and Michael Spence have euphemistically called “internal resistance from domestic incumbents”.
Modi and BJP winning a landslide victory in the 2024 elections will most likely signal the near-extinction of the political future careers of many of those “domestic incumbents” …
At the national level, the Congress Party and the Communist Party (and other Left-orientated political outfits) will most probably wither away. And at the regional level, half a score family-run dynastic political parties too could steadily get bankrupted if not neutered simply by the Government using the long arm of the law and unleashing the enforcement agencies. The voters who might give Modi such a clear and dominant majority mandate might simply then say, “Good riddance!”.
India’s voters seem to know that if they want the country not to lose the optimism and momentum of economic growth gained in the last 10 years, they just cannot afford to dilly-dally shilly-shally anymore with risky experimentations with coalition governments as in the past decades. The Opposition today to Modi is indeed such a ragtag coalition calling itself I. N. D. I Alliance with pretensions to being a “domestic incumbent” pledged to “saving India’s democracy”. All current trends and polls however seem to reveal that the voters are not so much anxious about Saving Democracy as they are about not to let “domestic incumbents” derail or destabilise the India’s Growth Story marching forwards and onwards to its 2047 destination.
Bharath Maathaa ki Jai !
Sudarshan Madabushi