FDI in retail: why the BJP needs a Vajpayee to speak up today

The debate over FDI in multi-brand retail is showing up some of us Indians’ deep-seated insecurities. Many of these insecurities and fears have their roots in a time and place when India was a borderline basket case. Yet, to continue to be haunted by ghosts of the past, when the world - and India - have changed dramatically only reflects a curious and crippling anachronism.

The BJP has resorted to a reflexive swadeshi sentiment that served the party well politically in another era, but makes no concession to the changed Indian landscape. It has now enlisted the services of Murli Manohar Joshi, the pinch-hitter of the swadeshi movement, to articulate the party’s diehard opposition to FDI in retail.

The party has, of course, always been susceptible to pressure from the swadeshi wing of the party. But in earlier times, it at least had leaders who had the courage to speak up and go against the tide of reflexive opposition when they sensed that a larger interest was being served.

When he was prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee frequently encountered resistance even from his NDA cabinet colleagues when difficult - and politically unpopular - policy decisions had to be taken. Arun Shourie, who served as disinvestment minister in the NDA government (and therefore experienced enormous pushback from ministers who didn’t want to lose a grip on the cash cow PSUs they were milking) has recorded how Vajpayee dealt with such inhibitions.

In a lecture in 2008 on the politics of reforms in India, Arun Shourie recalled:

“During the Government of Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, I witnessed first hand how everything in the end turned on what the Prime Minister would decide. Time and again, Mr. Vajpayee had to, and did risk opposition, time and again he staked the continuance of the Government on a proposal.

_“Again and again, colleagues in the Cabinet would argue, ‘But this will cost us votes… It will alienate such and thus section… People don’t understand the reasons for our pressing ahead with this…,’ and he would respond, ‘_To unhe samjhaanaa chaahiye… Desh ke prati bhi hamara kuch daayitva hai’ (Then, we should explain things to them… We have a duty towards the country also).

"‘But let us postpone this for two months,’ the critics would persist. ‘The elections in Gujarat are just round the corner… This will have a bad effect…’

"‘Some election or the other is always round the corner…,’ Atalji would say.”

How far the BJP has come - from the days when its prime minister risked everything, even political unpopularity and the survival of his government, to answer a larger calling for reforms. Today, even when it is in opposition, it is reduced to reflexively pandering to its political constituencies, without a leader of the stature of Vajpayee to call it to account.

It isn’t just the BJP, of course. Even Anna Hazare, who is increasingly becoming a rent-a-quote specialist on everything under the sun, believes that FDI in retail will “enslave India” - in the way that the East India Company did.

Well, someone should tell Anna that the world and India have come a long way since the days of the East India Company, which, by the way, is today owned by an Indian .