By DeshGujarat News, Ahmedabad, 8 April, 2012

In ‘Bharat Rising’ conclave, organized at ‘Gandhi labour institute’ in Ahmedabad, today afternoon, one of the most admired speeches was delivered by visiting professor of IIM Ahmedabad Shri Shailendra Mehta. Once a student of Dr. Subramanian Swamy in Harvard, Shri Mehta selected to speak in Hindi rather than English. He said he had spoken enough English during his long stay in the U.S, and it’s Hindi that would connect easily to the people here. Shri Mehta gave a short speech, but very effective one. Presented below is Shri Mehta’s speech in near perfect verbatim:

Here is a note in my hand. It was authored on 24 September 2011, and C. Rangarajan who heads the Economic Advisory Council of Prime Minister was the main author. I read one line from this note: ‘as against 60 million jobs created in the period 1999-2000 to 2004-05(NDA government), just about 1 million jobs were created between 2004 and 2009(UPA government). Think, the NDA govt facilitated 6 crore jobs, while UPA-1 10 lakh, means difference as large as 60 times. General perception is that the country is progressing. Yes, in some areas we are, but in important area like employment, there has been no progress in last five years.

The issue and the reason behind it is connected to economics, politics and way of thinking, and last one is the most important among three.

Let me discuss economics first.

The reason behind downfall in growth of employment is clear. India’s strength is in its primary areas like road, coal, power, port. As we all know, the progress rate in these areas is lowered down significantly. We all know that in NDA rule highway, power, coal production etc was on the path of sharp progress. But today highway construction is stalled, rise in power production is stalled, production of coal which is necessary for power generation has not gone up for last three years. Think, only one company which is Coal India produces 85-90% of total coal production of India and there’s stagnant rate of production in last three years. So we have more population, more demand, but there’s no coal! This problem with the government is about management. And it is not so difficult to manage the things well, because a picture of the nation can be changed with better management in main four-five areas. Today land acquisition has stopped, so you want to build road but there’s no land, you want to generate more power there’s no coal, and if everything is on tune, there are these environment related issues. This vicious cycle is eating our economic foundations. When projects are halted, burden shifts to our banks, their NPA increases, and profit decreases.

Our savings was 35%, but it has decreased to 31% because the government contribution is decreased by 4%. Our growth rate is stagnant at 6% for a long time. If this vicious circle goes ahead to play its role, our growth rate will further go down to 5% or 4%. If it goes to 4%, then it will be very difficult to push our economy forward.

Now lets discuss politics which would answer the question why this happened.

There needs to be what it is called samanvaya(connecting act). There needs to be samanvaya between tribal, rural and urban, there needs to be samanvaya between environment and development. There needs to be samanvaya between centre and the state. And present government is not able to do even one kind of samanvaya from these three.

In 1955, one very important book was written in India. It was a book ‘Sanskriti ke Char Adhyaya’ by Shri Ramdhari Singh Dinkar. Shri Jawaharlal Nehru had penned down foreword of the second edition of this book. Each paragraph, each line of this book can be a thesis in itself. In this book Shri Dinkar said, one who can’t do samanvaya can’t rule this nation. Whoever in the history of this country were successful were those who did samanvaya. Vajpayeeji was a great Samanvyakarta on all three fronts. Samanvaya is about bringing something common to surface. Present government is missing this point.

The last thing is about drishti(way of looking at things, vision) which is the most important.

When Arjun was in the field to fight the war of Mahabharata, he was 63. A knowledge, or an art of fighting the war was not lacking. But he just couldn’t fight. And Shri Krishna didn’t give him knowledge of arms, but in two-time Shri Krishna changed Arjun’s drishti. In India culture, whether you listen to Buddha or go through Jain darshan, it is commonly said that drishti galat, then gyan sahi nahi, gyan nahi to vyavhar sahi nahi. It is said that change the way of thinking, and your actions will change. Change the way of looking at things, and the destinations will change.

Note:The book suggested by Shri Mehta is available here for purchase

Shri Mehta’s page at IIM Ahmedabad website

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