Indian Policies Based On Voodoo Economics Says Former Ruling Party Official
August 3, 2023
“For the first time since the 1990s, the number of people who are below the poverty line in India has increased (by 75 million)…Employment in the country is on a sharply declining trend (a quarter of Indian youth are unemployed, twice the level of Bangladesh)…The nation’s economic woes stem from the Modi regime’s staggering incompetence.”
These words are written not by an “anti-national Indian” or a “cynical western journalist”, as any critical analysis is labeled by supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). They are from The Crooked Timber of New India: Essays on a Republic in Crisis by Parakala Prabhakar, a former leading official of the BJP.
In 1999, Prabhakar, 60-years-old, was a member of the cell guiding the BJP’s economic policy as well a member of the task force which prepared India’s Tenth Five-Year Plan.
The value of Crooked Timber is that, as a former leader of the BJP, Prabhakar confirms the failures of BJP’s economic policies, its divisive communal politics and disregard for civil liberties, which have been reported by independent journalists, analysts, academics, and human rights groups, both in India and abroad. He describes himself as a political economist on his LinkedIn profile; he earned a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. He writes in a blunt style, substantiated with with facts and figures.
The Indian economy is yet to return to the pre-pandemic level, writes Prabhakar. “Even before the pandemic struck, our economy was well into a slowdown. Indian entrepreneurs (and foreign investors) are unwilling to invest in the country.” Modi’s regime “has been unable to put together a well thought out, cohesive economic philosophy. It tries to market the easy path of selling public sector assets as reform. It shuns the heavy-lifting task of initiating actual reforms in running the public sector. New India parrots the idiom of full-fledged neo-liberal market ideology on the one hand, and on the other, short changes the nation’s assets to benefit the ruling party’s chosen cronies.”
“New India” Prabhakar continues, “falls prey to voodoo economists. They could easily convince a clueless government to take a disastrous measure like demonetisation (in 2016) which broke the back of the economy. During the pandemic, a phony stimulus package tried to address—or rather, give the impression of addressing—supply side issues, when the pressing need was for strengthening the demand side.”
Though unemployment in India is high, it faces a major shortage of skilled labor, says Prabhakar. Only 5% of India’s labor force is trained, compared to 80% in Japan and 96% in South Korea. In addition, universities, which were vibrant arenas of political debate and contest of ideas, are being attacked and made dysfunctional.
In the case of the media, “With a few honourable but dwindling exceptions, our print and television media bend backwards to serve the political and ideological interests of the ruling dispensation…Digital forums are…inundated with fake news and false narratives. The ruling party leads the game…” adds Prabhakar.
In contrast, on the political front, the BJP “has proved itself a genius at political manipulation,” writes Prabhakar. “It has toppled elected governments in state after state…The Modi regime is obsessed with untrammelled power to do as it pleases…Our Parliament today has been reduced to a body that gives a stamp of approval to every legislation and measure proposed by the government…Opposition leaders and their associates are raided by tax authorities, summoned by enforcement agencies for long, humiliating hours of questioning, and are even jailed without any trial.”
Parakala Prabhakar
Similarly, the police force has become an instrument of the BJP to achieve its political ends. Also, “Courts, including the Supreme Court, seem to have aligned with the Executive in its aggressive attempt to constrict civic rights,” adds Prabhakar. “And through all this, extreme bigotry has been legitimized…This government wilfully squanders our demographic dividend by filling the minds of young Indians with violent prejudice.” There are calls by Hindu nationalst leaders for the genocide and lynching of Muslims.
He also questions India’s claim of being tough with China. “While the Indian government wages war on its own citizens, China continues to enjoy the fruits of its recent incursions and sit pretty on a major chunk of our territory unchallenged. But the Prime Minister tells the nation that there was no incursion at all. Hardly anyone calls him out.”
How does the BJP market itself to its voting base, most of whom are struggling to survive? BJP’s “India is never found wanting in announcing innovative schemes, initiatives, programmes (Earlier one kilometer of a four lane road was one kilometer. Now it is four kilometers.)…After the dazzling launches are over—after they have served their purpose of giving a platform for lofty speeches with clever punchlines and vicious digs at previous governments—and made it to the next day’s newspaper headlines, the schemes fall by the wayside…Essentially, nothing straight can ever be made out of the crooked timber of New India. These much-publicised events are only expendable launch vehicles fired to put the payload of a majoritarian political creed into orbit.”
And how does the BJP maintain its grip on power? It is India’s richest political party; a “significant portion of its wealth has come to it through…electoral bonds, which make it possible for companies to donate unlimited amounts of money to political parties anonymously… Deployment of huge financial resources has made the ruling party a formidable electoral juggernaut.”
Since 2010, Prabhakar has been the Managing Director of RightFOLIO, a Chennai, India, based brand management, corporate communications, human resources, market research and event management company.
From 1992 to 2019, he was the Managing Director at the Centre for Public Policy Studies, near Hyderabad, providing research and policy consultancy to United Nations agencies, government departments and banks and corporations. It is now part of RightFOLIO, which Prabhakar runs.
His Ph.D. thesis at the London School of Economics, 1986-1991, was on the political economy of security in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Earlier, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, he earned an M.Phil., 1980-1982, and a MA, 1978-80, both in International Relations.
Prabhakar earned a BA in Economics from Andhra Loyola College, Vijaywada, India, 1975-78. He finished his earlier education mostly at institutions in Narsapur, Andhra Pradesh.
Since 1997, Prabhakar has been the Managing Trustee of the Parakala Seshavataram Memorial Trust, Huderabad, which runs a school focused on helping improve the quality of education received by children of middleclass families.
In 1996, Prabhakar left the Congress Party to join the BJP, expecting the BJP was comitted to a secular, progressive India and no longer a platform for Hindu nationalism. He was in the BJP till 2006, including as a candidate for parliament and being the party’s spokesperson in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Looking back at his time in the BJP, Prabhakar told Mathrubhumi, “It does’nt mean that I am someone who never makes mistakes.”
“The political strength of the…(BJP government) does not emanate from its performance record on any of the parameters that should matter,” writes Prabhakar. “Its political strength rests solidly on its emotive, divisive agenda that plays on the explicit and implicit prejudice of the majority (Hindu) community.”
There are few in India who dare question the policies of the BJP government, writes Prabhakar. “Fear is a hard and visible reality today…So, many people feel it safer to express support for the establishment, or to remain silent.” Prabhakar is one of the brave voices.
(Story updated August 4, 2023.)
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