July 7, 2004

THE REFORM: THE CRUEL AND THE HUMANE
UNDERSTANDING AN ANALOGY OF THE SACRIFICIAL GOAT

Reform in the true sense of the word is all right, but 'the Reform' we have been pursuing for the last decade does not augur well with the common man. People of this country held the BJP-led NDA government guilty of cruelty to common man and voted it out as a mode of punishment. Taking cue from this, our new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is going on reiterating that his Congress-led UPA government would continue with 'the Reform' with 'human face'. Thus, the focus of national discussion has been shifted from the very 'desirability of the Reform' to the ways of doing it accepting indirectly its desirability and the subsequent discussions useless.

So, the ways - the cruel and the humane - have to be understood in this backdrop. But how to proceed is a problem because dictionaries including legal dictionaries are not of much help. However, one analogy may help in this regard at least up to some extent.

Almost twenty years ago in the beginning of my career as a journalist, I came across a legal battle in a court. It was all about a 'sacrificial goat'. The story of the prosecution goes like this.

“ A goat , kept for the purpose of sacrifice, entered into a green-field of a neighbour. The neighbour picked up a stick and ran towards the goat to drive it out from his field. However, he slipped and fell down. In the meantime, the stick got into the goat's back and pierced through the stomach. The goat unfortunately died at the spot.”

The defending lawyer argued that killing of an animal like goat is not a crime and the accused did not kill it intentionally. So the accused should not be punished. The court agreed with this argument but it found the accused guilty of cruelty to animal because the way it was killed. It was argued by the prosecution that killing an animal like goat is permissible and it is not offence provided that it is done without cruelty as butchers do. But the way this man killed the goat is a cruelty.

The incident gives a certain level of understanding of the ways of this world. Vaishnavites may object to killing of animals, but not our system. Butchers are alright because they are legally considered not showing cruelty toward animals. They do kill, but humanely.

This explains the present scenario of the era of “the Reform.” The Reform and the reformists are al right now. They have become acceptable for many among us except the few economic thinkers who are like Vaishnavites objecting to animal killing. But who cares! “The Reform” goes on.

We have been systematically, as a part of a greater conspiracy, dragged into an illusion through the very terminology of “the Reform” itself. The conspirators want the common man to believe that this term has the same meaning as of the word “reform.” However, both are in fact entirely different things.

Semantically speaking, reform is a set of changes for improvements in a system. By using the word “reform” the interested groups succeeded to make most of the people believe that “the Reform” is a set of changes for improvement in the economic system.

Not only this word, but the Reformers also misused many other words. When they mean a price hike they love to call it rationalisation of the charges like water and electricity, selling off public sector companies in select private hands at a throw away price is euphemistically called disinvestments for better administration, giving profits to the rich industrialists through taxes, tax holidays, loans on cheaper rates and later write-offs as incentives for better economy while doling out even comparatively small amount to farmers of poor are frowned upon as populist measures and subsidies. Rightsizing is their terminology for rendering people out of jobs through various means. They repeat day in and day out about hard decisions for economic growth, which in reality intended only for common man. This hardness is not at all for the rich and the privileged class.

These reformists never say , “ Let us take some hard decisions for the economic growth - confiscate all the illegal black money dishonestly accumulated by some, take action against willful big defaulters who habitually do not pay the taxes and loans to the government, and the like.” Therefore, we see that the talks of so called hard decisions are feared only by common man. There is always a possibility that government gives benefit to the people for declaration of their ill gotten black money by way of not confiscating them and only charging a tax, but put heavy taxes on the money honestly earned with hard labour.

The reformists concentrate only on economic growth in terms of property - in cash and kind. Their claim is partly correct that we should have money enough in our treasury and food enough in our godowns to protect our people from distress. But they are wrong when they try to accumulate property at the cost of the majority of the people putting more distress to them. “The Reform” which is being pursued in our country has become synonymous with the increasing miseries of common man. There is no dearth of examples. It is because they think of security only at the national level ignoring food and financial security at household levels.

The NDA government pushed such a “reform” in a shameless cruel way and paid the wages of this sin in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections. UPA government is now thinking that people were not against the reform but were offended by the way it was pushed through. So the new government wants it to continue with the measures which the leadership thinks to be a human face. But we should always be careful about “the human face” and try to peer into the real face of the government, otherwise it may prove too costly to bear. Let us not allow ourselves to be a “sacrificial goat” as mentioned above in the analogy. (EOM)