About infrastructure and bad governance

About infrastructure and bad governance
The Times of India


The maddeningly uninformed debate on Bangalore’s infrastructure problems is bonechillingly alarming. That grown persons are apparently unable to see the issue for what it really is may explain why we are taking forever to put down proper foundations for a nation to grow apace in harmony. Here are some thoughts:

Politicians are largely elected by people who do not pay taxes.

Disposable tax revenues, (after accounting for subsidies - that mostly don’t get to the intended beneficiaries — interest on debt, government salaries and perks and defence), when not stolen or squandered, are largely disbursed on those who do not pay taxes.

There is only a nodding relationship between payment of tax and its use to directly benefit the taxpayer. Thus, middle-class anger regarding infrastructure does not lose politicians much sleep, as the votes are won elsewhere in other constituencies. Every rupee spent in urban areas is a rupee less available for non-urban uses, where the voter is.

Even were there to be sufficient money allocated to infrastructure, the incompetent and desultory supervision of its use by our masters and the large-scale cheating indulged in by the contractors, who recover the heavy kickbacks they pay by using sub standard materials, should ensure that relief would only be temporary as the works undertaken would start to fall apart sooner rather than later.

The total absence of discipline, courtesy, knowledge of rules and regulations and their adherence, means that a good road will not translate into a safe road that can be traversed at speed. A nation that gained independence by civil disobedience has perfected it in the sixty years since. The educated classes, generally, provide scant evidence in their comportment of having imbibed other essentials of civilisation beyond the ability to spell and add.

The patchy band-aid that is being threatened to befall on us by a lick of macadam here and there is going to do virtually nothing to solve Bangalore’s problems. Lots of money will disappear into pockets, correspondingly less will be available for other uses, and, as the population doubles over the next decade or so, problems will grow manifold. Hell beckons for one and all.

It remains a puzzle why the big boys in the IT sector appear to do so little to bring IT into general application inside the country to help make India stronger. Almost all their efforts and sales are directed to add muscle to economies overseas; meanwhile, India trudges along with antediluvian structures and methods. This suggests the clamour led by the IT sector for improved infrastructure has limited purpose: to help their shareholders and employees become richer, while adding lustre to entice more business. This unquestionably is laudable. But it’s unfortunately not an attempt to help catalyse a social revolution and make life agreeable for all sections of society. Tragically, the IT icons have elected not to use their considerable power and goodwill to trigger a movement for real change and the middle class perception that what’s good for IT is good for them is touching but an illusion.

The massive underpayment of taxes by vast numbers of people leaves government coffers essentially bereft to enterprise any serious, long-lasting development work. Despite the generally held belief that netas and babus are the most corrupt in India, the reality is that businessmen and you and I who do the bribing, are much more numerous than the bribed netas and babus. Further, the gain to the briber is tens of times greater than the sums paid to the bribed and often the gain is held in perpetuity! There are more corrupt businessmen as a percentage of their population than there are corrupt netas and babus as a percentage of their respective populations.

The peddling of the farrago that economic growth will soon make India great is arrant nonsense. Is this latest myth, sedulously created by our rulers, manufactured to distract us into hankering after shiny things in shops now available on cheap credit everywhere, while they ruthlessly deceive and plunder at an exponential rate?

Two generations after independence, India remains a deeply scarred and ugly place. We remain a feudal society in our character and temperament. Several “nations” are jostling for space within the country. Bad governance is only a painful manifestation of the national character, and is imbued with complex factors of hierarchy, social position, supply and demand of jobs, little understanding of excellence, widespread acceptance of second and third rate, and so infinitely on. Bad governance will go when the people grow up. That is two generations away still. Meanwhile, do we muddle along with just the servants to kick around or are we going to wake up to our own complicity? Time is running out as things inexorably unhinge over the next twenty years or thereabouts.