Elections in India, lessons for us
Dr Farrukh Saleem
The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist
Hindu voters reposed their trust in a Christian woman who in turn nominated a Sikh to be India’s Prime Minister. A Muslim.Forbes’ swore in the Sikh list of 476-dollar billionaires has nine Indians in it. Azim Premji is the richest Indian and the 45th richest on the face of the planet (Forbes’ list has no Pakistani listed in it). Time magazine has Premji as one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Premji owns 84 percent of Wipro Limited (NYSE:WIT), the global information technology services company that serves Boeing, Ericsson, Toshiba, IBM, Cisco, Seagate, Microsoft, United Technologies, Best Buy, Digital, NCR, Thames Water and Sony. Wipro’s home is Bangalore, Karnataka. Karnataka voted BJP. BJP won 17 of Karnataka’s 28 Lok Sabha seats. Congress won 6.
As on May 7, the Reserve Bank of India had $118.5 billion in foreign exchange reserves. Merrill Lynch, the New York-based investment-banking firm, had announced that India would have an estimated GDP growth of 8 percent. As against the previous estimated growth rate of 7.3 percent…" Fine economic policy, solid economic growth and macroeconomic stability.
Residents of Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Lucknow, Ludhiana and Amritsar can afford more consumer durables now than ever before. By the end of 1999, India had just three world-class shopping malls; Spencer in Chennai, Crossroads in Mumbai and Ansals in New Delhi. Crossroads is planning an investment of Rs300 crore putting up malls in Bangalore, Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai. Spenser is being expanded to 7 lakh square feet of retail space. In the following three years some 70 lakh square feet of urban retail space is being planned. India is shinning, or is it?
Lok Sabha Elections 2004 boiled down to a tussle between India’s rapidly prospering cities and the yet-to-be-touched villages; between the wealthy Corporate India and India’s hand-to-mouth farmers. Cities voted BJP, villages voted Congress. Corporate India voted BJP, farmers voted Congress. Prosperity voted BJP, poverty voted the other way. India’s urban population is 285 million, rural 741 million. BJP paid the price of not paying any attention to rural India. Congress won, BJP lost (Vajpayee was in Islamabad whey didn’t he consult with us?).
As on May 8, the State of Bank of Pakistan had $12.5 billion in foreign exchange reserves. On May 8, Pakistan’s Finance Minister, at the signing ceremony of the Rs20.5 billion loan to Pak Arab Refinery, expressed “optimism that Pakistan would achieve 8 percent GDP growth rate within three years.” Fine economic policy, solid economic growth and macroeconomic stability.
Anyone who owns urban land in Islamabad, Lahore or Karachi is richer now than ever before. Every homeowner in Islamabad, Lahore Defense or Karachi Defense is a millionaire. There is little doubt that consumer finance-cars, electronics, computers-and housing finance is doing wonders in urban Pakistan.
On 12 October 1999, the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) had a capitalization of Rs339 billion. On 19 May 2004, KSE’s capitalization stood at Rs1.46 trillion. Pakistanis who own shares in KSE-listed companies are Rs1 trillion richer now than they were on October 12. Stockbrokers of Karachi Stock Exchange Road and bankers from Karachi’s I.I. Chundrigar Road sing unending songs of Pakistan’s ‘macroeconomic stability and solid economic growth’. Long live the Musharraf government! Restaurants are packed to capacity and urban housewives are in the shop-till-drop mode. Long lives Prime Minister Chaudry Jamali Elahi!
In India, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Amritsar and every other urban city with a population of more than one million put together add up to a total of 115 million Indians (India has 35 cities with more than a million). Benefits of India’s rapid economic growth had failed to reach India’s villages and BJP’s unexpected defeat reflects nothing but that widespread rural resentment. Voters from among the 741 million disenfranchised rural Indian’s voted BJP out.
According to the Population Association of Pakistan, 97 million Pakistanis live in rural areas. Our ‘solid economic growth’ has largely been for the stockbrokers and bankers of Karachi and Lahore. Pakistan’s $12.5 billion in foreign exchange reserves have not made any dent in the poverty-stricken lives of 97 million Pakistanis. To be certain, Rs1 trillion worth of profits in shares have been taken up by no more than a hundred thousand Pakistanis.
Lesson Number 1: Make no mistake; there is widespread rural resentment against the rulers and all their proxies. If there were to be free and fair elections-and that’s the biggest of all ifs in this Islamic Republic-then affluent Islamabad plus the stock brokers and bankers of Karachi and Lahore may vote for the government but Pakistan’s rural poor are bound to vote with their feet, dead against the real governors (and their proxies). Remember, there are at least 97 million disenfranchised rural Pakistanis. The ruling party would have to pay the price of not paying any attention to rural Pakistan.
Next lesson. BJP, the Hindu fundamentalists, have lost in the Hindi Heartland states of Bihar, Jharkand, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. In 1999, BJP had won 29 seats in Uttar Pradesh. This time around the secular, socialist Samajwadi Party has won 24 with BJP at 9. In 1999, BJP had won 20 of Gujarat’s 26 seats. Not being fair to the Muslims of Gujarat the Hindus of Gujarat withdrew their support and BJP’s seat count was cut down to 14.
Lesson Number 2: Fundamentalist parties in Pakistan-political entities that claim to be more Muslim than other Pakistanis-face a bleak electoral future. Pakistani heartland will not vote for fundamentalists.
Next lesson. India’s Ministry of Disinvestments claims to have privatised 139 state-owned companies with accumulated receipts of Rs45, 066 crore (http://www.divest.nic.in/performance.htm). In the recent Lok Sabha elections, Indian voters gave 43 seats to the Communist Party-Marxist, 10 seats to Communist Party of India and 36 seats to Samajwadi Party. All these parties have an explicit anti-privatisation manifesto.
Incidentally, Pakistan’s Privatisation Commission also claims to have completed 139 transactions at gross proceeds of Rs134 billion (http://www.privatisation.gov.pk/about/Progress-in-PC-new.htm). The Commission further claims that “during the period from July 2003 to March 15, 2004 [the Commission] has realized Rs33.143 billion from sale of GOP shareholding in OGDCL, NBP, POL, ARL, DG Khan Cement, SSGC, Thatta Cement, 51% GOP stake in HBL, Associated Cement, Rohri and 10% shares of Khurram Chemicals.”
Lesson Number 3: Privatisations of state-owned enterprises continues to be a popular theme with economists trained at western universities and also at the World Bank-IMF combine. At grass roots, privatisations may not be all that popular in Pakistan either.
When BJP fell, the Bombay Stock Exchange’s Sensex suffered a historic drop. At one point in time some $45 billion worth of paper wealth had been wiped off (that’s the equivalent of 70 percent of Pakistan’s annual GDP). In Sensex’ historic drop there also is a lesson for the Karachi Stock Exchange.
Lastly, Sonia Gandhi—and Indians are so lucky to have such a self-sacrificing leader—summed up the elections saying, “This is a defeat of arrogance…” P.S. Dr Manmohan Singh was born in the village of Gah (what became Pakistan). His ancestral home is in Rawalpindi.
