Page 68 - EW February 2025_Neat

Postscript

Monument error when Indira Gandhi returned to power at the Centre in
1980, following the ignominious collapse of the Janata
OLLOWING THE DEMISE OF FORMER PRIME Party coalition government. The late V. Krishnamurthy
minister Dr. Manmohan Singh on December 26 last — the greatest ever public sector enterprises chieftain
Fyear, there’s been an outpouring of national grief. (BHEL, SAIL) — was despatched to negotiate with Suzuki
The country’s most eminent political leaders and celebrat- and returned with an agreement in record time.
ed economists, including Nobel laureate Dr. Amartya Sen Maruti-Suzuki India Ltd began production in 1982 in
have paid handsome tributes to him as the great liberator Gurgaon, Haryana as a public sector majority sharehold-
who as Union finance minister in the Congress govern- ing (55 percent) joint venture company with R.C. Bhar-
ment headed by prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao at gava, a Central government bureaucrat as chairman. Only
that time, engineered the liberalisation and deregulation 20 years later did the government sell its equity at a vast
of the Indian economy in 1991. Since 1991, India’s annual profit to Suzuki. Today MIL is India’s largest and most
rate of economic growth (GDP) has averaged 7 percent valuable cars manufacturing company (annual revenue:
emerging from the 3.5 percent rut in which it was mired Rs.146,000 crore) and exports India-made motor cars to
for over 50 years. As a result, an estimated 400 million 100 countries.
citizens have been lifted above the poverty line. In Japan, Suzuki Motors is an also-ran automotives
Yet while Manmohan Singh (MMS) was invested with manufacturing company dwarfed by Toyota and Honda.
many fine personal qualities, the plain truth is that he was But Osamu Suzuki outflanked them by venturing abroad
not the reformer-redeemer of the Indian economy. On the to developing countries (including India) and establish-
contrary for over 30 years, MMS was a complicit architect ing 35 Suzuki Motors plants in 23 countries. And his
of the public sector led licence-permit-quota raj edifice modus operandi: to closely cooperate with governments
which destroyed the modest material hopes of over 1 bil- to establish strong viable business enterprises. That’s not
lion citizens of politically free but economically enslaved crony capitalism, but good business sense. Rahul Gandhi
India. and sidekick Jairam Ramesh who are always trashing
The evidence is overwhelming. After he was inducted government-business cooperation, please note.
into the Central government as an advisor to the com-
merce ministry in 1969, MMS served as chief economic
adviser in the ministry of finance, and was promoted to Voice in wilderness
the office of finance secretary during the dark noon of
the Emergency. Subsequently, he served in the Planning EWLY SWORN-IN PRESIDENT DONALD
Commission (1980-82) and then as governor of the Re- Trump’s inauguration speech promising to crack
serve Bank of India (1982-85) and again as deputy chair- Ndown and repatriate illegal immigrants in the US
man of the Planning Commission (1985-87) before he was to their countries of origin has instilled the fear of God in
appointed Union finance minister by P.V. Narasimha Rao the Indian establishment which has long turned a blind
(PVNR) in 1991. The real even if belated liberaliser of the eye and fudged the issue of why millions of Indians climb
Indian economy was PVNR. every mountain and ford every stream to illegally and
There’s a proposal to erect a memorial monument for legally flee this country, which according to our political
MMS in Delhi. On the other hand, PVNR was denied a leaders is the world’s fastest growing economy.
ceremonial funeral in the national capital. This proposal According to the UK-based Henley & Partners, 4,300
if implemented would be an injustice and perversion of dollar millionaires quit India in 2024 and 5,100 in 2023.
history. And at the other end, millions of poor Indians at the bot-
tom of the wealth and incomes pyramid are selling all and
risking life and limb to illegally migrate to the US, UK and
Good business sense other Western countries. The number of Indian illegal
immigrants in the US is reliably estimated at 725,000 and
N INDIA, THE DEMISE OF AUTOMOBILES manufac- over 1 million in the UK. In between the rich and poor is
turing tycoon Osamu Suzuki in Hamamatsu, Japan on the harassed middle class, equally anxious to migrate to
IDecember 25, didn’t receive the media attention that anywhere in the West that will have them. India’s top pri-
it should have. With typical ingratitude, the Indian public vate clubs are replete with successful upper middle class
has forgotten the massive contribution made by him to- members with children parked abroad, a status symbol.
wards revolutionising the country’s moribund motor cars The solution is self-evident. In 1978, India and the na-
manufacturing industry dominated for half a century by tional incomes of India and neighbouring China were on
the Ambassador, a replica of the 1950s British Morris and a par. In that year this writer as editor of Business India
the Premier Padmini, a replica of the mid-1950s Italian and Deng Xiaoping recommended our countries throw
Fiat. By the 1970s, the technology of these gas- guzzling off the yoke of bankrupt socialism and take the Capitalist
cars was completely outdated. It was famously said of Road to development and prosperity. Your editor’s was a
the Ambassador that the only component of the car that voice in the wilderness. China heeded Deng Xiaoping.
didn’t make a noise was the horn. Currently, China’s GDP is $18 trillion, India’s $3.5
Under intense middle class pressure after the OPEC trillion, and we still haven’t fully abandoned the social-
petroleum price hikes of 1973 and 1979 made the gas- ist road. Even today MSMEs (micro small and medium
guzzling Ambassador and Premier Padmini unaffordable, enterprises) are governed by 1,536 Acts and Rules, 69,233
a proposal to revive the Maruti small car project initiated compliances and 6,818 annual filings, enabling un-
by Sanjay Gandhi during the Emergency was forwarded checked retail corruption. No wonder everyone wants out.

68 EDUCATIONWORLD FEBRUARY 2025