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Off late I had been hearing a lot of negatives across various discussion forums about the economy, general sentiments and a not so good political environment… and was seriously thinking that if we as normal people, whose saving had been actually propelling the growth of the country know so much about the adversity, how come these so called educated planners of the country not understand it? But then the next day I saw a newspaper mocking our PM Mr. Manmohan as “Ek Tha Tiger”.

It did send a tickle of smile on my face but on a serious note I also realized that yes, this man had in the past  been responsible for India becoming global and changing the economy from a 20-25% interest rate economy to a close to a 10-12% one. Having said that, it took hell a lot of time to unleash these reforms which were so badly needed and that too the fate of implementation is yet to be decided by his allies. The blog would revolve around two things: a). Why did it take so long to unveil these reforms when they had been in pipeline since ages? and b). Is FDI the lone savior for the country’s not so upbeat economy?

Well, no prize for guessing that one big reason for the delay was the coalitions government in power and was more often than not deterred by one of the many allies which formed a spineless government. Each of the allies had their own vested regional interest and each of them wanted to be the hero of the common man (read as the vote bank). By this, they actually were trying to gain two things 1). They always took populist stance like not hiking fuel price not allowing foreigners to eat up the local kirana etc 2). At the same time not be blamed about the not so buoyant economic growth by shedding the responsibility by saying, after all we are just small allies. If not fully successful, I am sure these allies have gained more than they were supposed to in this game because of the fact that (many may not agree) “The majority of educated individuals in India DONOT VOTE and the majority of voters in India are not educated”. The second reason which I can comprehend is the time left for elections when these allies along with any of the national party shall get another 5 years of time to actually fool around. As they say, “the common man does not remember a lot of things and the last thing is remembered the most”. Hence this last minute attempt to salvage the four years of futility might actually click for the government now where they can actually put up their case to the public when it is required the most.

Let’s talk about the next point where time and again it had been thought that FDI or FII can be our lone saviors’. It’s true that that these foreign investors would bring in the much required wealth of investment into the country and strengthen the economy’s growth and employment. It’s also true that the dollars which they bring in will strengthen the rupee and would cut down our current account deficit and stuff like that, but can’t it not be more advantageous when the government can become more exports friendly, the dollar would still flow in, the growth would still be humongous and the employment will still soar. Let’s take Thailand for example, a country much smaller than us but a one which has a much stronger currency than ours, a much stronger infrastructure than ours, a country where people are probably more industrious than ours. It exports almost everything it can from flowers to clothes, from chocolates to toys, from electronics to knowhow. Don’t we produce any of the things which Thailand does? The answer is We do!! But still things are not the same here. There is no dearth of industrious people in our country nor the dearth of capital but there is a serious dearth of attitude change required by the government towards the industry and exports. The sooner it changes the better it would be, both, for the people and the government!!!!