VOX POPULI

by

Aam Admi

Issue:141

Date: 01.12.2012

Contents:

1. Let Market Forces Rule In India’s Corporate Sector

2. Authorities Should Act According To Law

3. BJP No Better Than The Congress

4. The Aam Admi Party

5. FDI in Parliament

Let Market Forces Rule In India’s Corporate Sector

Recently one of the senior office-bearers of ASSOCHAM told the media that if the government can bail out Air india then why should Kingfisher not be bailed out at least by the public sector banks from which it has borrowed massive amounts of money, since Kingfisher is operating in the same area as Air India and is faced with similar problems. In any case there should have been no question of bailing out Air India since given the enormity of the problems it has been facing in the recent past, it should have been allowed to die a natural death since it will remain a massive liability for the government and the Indian tax-payer. The logic, however, of bailing Kingfisher by analogy as above is infallible but then let us look at this in a slightly different perspective. If you are a big borrower and default then the banks are keen to find a way out like rescheduling etc. take the instance of Kingfisher Airlines here and that of Suzlon and other major corporates. But if you are a small borrower then the bank jumps on you for repayment. There is no question of rescheduling here and the banks go even to the extent of publishing the poor person’s photo in the papers saying he is a defaulter. We have seen these kind of ads for those who default on home loans in the daily papers. In the same way when some activists pushed for the publication of photos in newspapers of the major 400 defaulters by size with banks in India among whom are big and reputed corporates, the RBI stepped in saying that this is not as per the prevailing banking rules. Why should there be one rule for the common man and another for the well-heeled is the question? It is time therefore that the genteel and sophisticated mask of the rich and powerful is ripped off and they brought on par with the rest of the country. If any business like Kingfisher fails then let it go into bankruptcy since someone else will take their place or the other players in the same sector will benefit. Thus in each sector let market forces rule and not the hush hush whispers of crony capitalism.

Authorities Should Act According To Law

The arrests in Palghar of the girls who posted on Facebook the protest about the bandh on the day after the Shiv Sena chief had died is representative of the authorities tending to take the easy way out in any administrative action. It is also a case of the establishment leaning unnecessarily on defenceless individuals since it is afraid to deal with an organised entity in this case a militant political party.It is not only in this case but it is always found that any of the authorities in our country tend to take the safe side and harass single individuals who have less clout or voice to make themselves heard about the injustice being meted out to them. It is only now that media as also the Internet have given a mechanism for these voiceless people to be heard. What should be done is that the authorities should act according to law which will obviate the need as we are now seeing in the above case of corrective punitive action against the magistrate and police officers being launched which was completely unnecessary if they had acted to implement proper justice. In a democracy there is no need to muzzle free speech which also brings to the fore that our political parties and their members should take criticism against them more pro-actively and in a balanced manner rather than resort to violence at the drop of a hat.

BJP No Better Than The Congress

On the Gadkari issue the BJP is turning out to be no better than the Congress by ignoring the aspect of money laundering in the floating of Gadkari’s Purti group of Cos. where the latest evidence unearthed by the media is showing that Gadkari’s very near relatives are the ones who had put money into the shell Cos. which in turn invested in the Purti group. The BJP instead of coming clean from this matter in the manner of metal being rid of impurities by melting it in a furnace which it could have easily done by sacking Gadkari is playing with the Congress as to who’s the one that is better at corruption? Further by sacking Ram Jethmalani for speaking his mind on the Gadkari issue and that of the CBI Director, it is showing intolerance of criticism and trying to muzzle free speech within the party on matters where there is no real defence for the leaders of the party to take such hasty and intemperate action. Thus there is no real difference between the Congress and the BJP when it comes to either its leaders being found to be corrupt or not being allowed to speak against the party leadership. In the Congress we have the ubiquitous High Command while with the BJP it seems to be the Central Committee. Thus in this context new parties adding to the regional parties complement gives a greater choice to the Indian voter in the upcoming general elections.

FDI in Parliament

In some quarters of the media it is being debated on why government policy should be brought to Parliament in the context of the present controversy of FDI in multi-brand retail. These people may be right about this position to a certain extent but then it was the Congress on the floor of Parliament that had offered to discuss it prior to implementation. Thus the position that the Opposition is taking that you cannot offer to discuss it and then change your mind in just a couple of months and say that policy is within the domain of the executive. Why are the Congress going back on their assurance? The onus therefore is on the Congress to come clean and not play hesitant or dilly-dally in the face of executing government policy. This in no case will become a precedent for future policy either for the Congress or in the faint hope that the BJP still holds to come back to power.

The Aam Admi Party

Arvind Kejriwal has announced the name of his political party as the - Aam Admi party. This is another milestone in the journey of R K Laxman's ubiquitous common man (or aam admi) from being a silent observer in the cartoons to a likely active player in the political arena. This is a good thing since it is very important that the aam admi representative of the Indian middle class takes a more active role rather than get snowed under by various government measures mostly taxation and price rise since he is more often than not taken for granted. In a democratic process it is important apart from being passively participatory to be demanding of one's rights at appropriate times. As it is the aam admi vote has no value since it gets lost in the morass of the vote banks cultivated by our politicians of the poor and marginalised sections of society. There is an issue here of understanding what we mean by the vibrancy of our democracy which is held as a beacon by our politicians and professional psephologists when extolling it around the world. Is it only in the ability of the electorate to overturn governments every 5 years or do we have to judge vibrancy in some other way? Just like music played by a novice varies from that played by maestros like Ravi Shankar or Hari Prasad Chaurasia, so also we need to index the vibrancy of our democracy and that is in its ability to assimilate feedback, to act in time on issues which are important to the people and to set the nation on a path of growth and prosperity without being preferential about it to certain sections of society as we see happening now. Thus the choice of the name of Arvind Kejriwal' political party augurs well and we do hope it will usher in positive change in the life of this nation. Postscript: Arvind Kejriwal has used the name – Aam Admi for his fledgling political outfit which is what I had started using a long time ago for my Vox Populi authorship. For a larger cause, I guess, it is OK to sacrifice the name. The term – Mango Man , being bandied around now for the aam admi is more in the nature of a pejorative and should be ignored.

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