LEADER ARTICLE
Reality Check 2004: Yeh Public Hai, Sab Jaanti Hai

There is a centuries-old proverb that states: There are none so blind as those who will not see. Many of India’s media moguls, political pundits, pollsters, babus and businessmen have been stunned by the verdict in the 14th General Elections. Why did they get it so badly wrong? Was it a consequence of their own isolation and ignorance, their inability to feel the pulse of the people? Or was it simply a case of wishful thinking going terribly awry? The answer: a combination of both.
When news came in on Tuesday morning about the kind of rejection that the erstwhile CEO of Andhra Pradesh had received from his constituents, many who walk the corridors of chambers of commerce could not believe their eyes and ears. After all, this was supposed to be the same man who had impressed the two Bills (Clinton and Gates) with the bright lights of Cyberabad.
They failed to hear the cries of thousands of farmers who committed suicide. They failed to audit the thousands of crores that had come from the World Bank, and the Union government (in the name of drought relief). Worse, the elite failed to even see beyond their noses. They did not notice that the poor of Hyderabad and Secundera-bad were not exactly impres-sed by the obsession of India’s most computer-savvy chief minister to place their city on the global ‘netlas’.
This was the very section that believed that the Hindus of Gujarat would remain so enamoured of Narendra Modi that they would vote the Congress out of the six Lok Sabha seats it had won in 1999. They could not foresee how a party, with an Italian-born president, could do any better in this ‘communally-polarised’ state. In the event, the BJP failed to retain even Mehsana, the constituency which comprised not only one of the two seats the party had won in 1984 but also witnessed intense post-Godhra rioting. Will the well-heeled who were being wooed to invest in India’s most investor-friendly state — and who are smart enough to anticipate each rise and fall of the Sensex — realise the importance of the silent revolution that has taken place in the dairy country?
When the prime minister announced from the ramparts of Red Fort that millions of new jobs would be created, they took it as done. The reality, of course, was quite different. The truly ironical aspect of the employment situation in India is that job opportunities grew at a much faster rate when population was also growing relatively faster. Between 1981 and 1991, population grew at 2.14 per cent per year compared to 1.93 per cent between 1991 and 2001, the lowest growth rate since the country became independent. According to the Planning Commission, whereas overall employment grew by 2.43 per cent per annum between 1987-88 and 1993-94, the rate of growth of employment had slumped to barely one per cent between 1993-94 and 1999-2000.
Should one then be surprised that phrases like “economic liberalisation� or “second-generation reforms� failed to excite those who did not attend seminars organised by media-friendly apex industry associations? Is it not ‘natural’ that the policy of privatising profit-making public sector enterprises failed to enthuse the unemployed at a time when the country is going through a phase of jobless growth? Did anyone notice that the booming IT sector accounted for no more than four per cent of India’s GDP? Everyone who mattered seemed so impressed at how call centres were mushrooming — even if it was only because Indians were better than the Chinese in saying “tough gals can’t dance� with the right Yankee twang — that there was nothing more left to ask.
Instead, the chorus grew everyday that India was shining, nay dazzling, because the eco-nomy grew by an impressive 10.4 per cent over a three-month period (October to December 2003) over the corresponding quarter of the previous year that experienced a terrible drought. It was, as the cliche goes, a case of lies, damn lies and statistics (the latter courtesy, the Central Statistical Orga-nisation). The hype about 16.9 per cent growth in agriculture, forestry and fishing in Q3 of FY04 took no notice of the simple fact that the same sector had seen a 9.8 per cent fall in output during Oct-Dec 2002.
A former finance minister of West Bengal, Ashok Mitra, once compared contemporary economists with the Brahmins of yesteryears whose main job was to act as a buffer between the king and the masses. The outgoing government deployed a battalion of spin doctors and malleable mediapersons to send short messages on mobile phones. But few of us (this writer included) could anticipate how ordinary voters of the country wouldn’t just summarily dismiss, but actually react adversely against such chicanery. As a line from the popular song goes, Yeh public hai, sab jaanti hain.
One should never become excessively despondent when confronted with the cynicism of those who refuse to see. The darkest hour is just before the dawn. Things could certainly have become worse. But the poor and the illiterate, fortunately, are not unintelligent. And since they don’t rest in air-conditioned comfort, they feel the heat and dust of the hustings.