SOTN: India questions eco reforms

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New Delhi: The economic reforms since 1991 are supposed to have invited one of the most intense and passionate debates in the country. The reality is embarrassing.

Only three per cent Indians have a fair idea of what the economic reforms are all about, says the Hindustan Times-CNN-IBN State of the Nation Survey conducted by the Centre of Study of Developing Studies.

The survey, in the second week of January, interviewed 7,681 ordinary people spread across 970 villages in 19 states of the country. Respondents were quizzed in the simplest language about some of the big questions raised in this debate.

Ignorant but not clueless

As many as 28 per cent people claimed they had heard about the new economic policies. But most of them did not have even a rough idea of the broad directions of the policy changes: deregulation, disinvestment, free trade, foreign investment and ‘liberal’ labour laws. Even among the most highly educated and media exposed, this figure was only 14 per cent.

Instead of asking people about actual economic policies, the survey gave them two fairly worded policy options and asked the people to choose one. The findings bring little cheer to the gung-ho supporters of economic reform:

• The Indian public is, on balance, clearly opposed to disinvestment of public sector undertakings, downsizing of the government and entry of foreign companies. Those who are well informed about these policies are even more opposed to these than the less informed.
• There is little demand for reduction in direct taxes. If the Finance Minister wanted to increase the tax on the rich, he would have solid public backing from all quarters except, of course, the urban rich.
• There is an overwhelming agreement that public services like electricity, water, road transport, hospitals and schools should be run by the government and not by private companies.
• If running these public services well requires increasing the fee or tariff, the people, including the poor, are prepared to shell out more money.
• The public believes that the economic policies of the last 15 years have benefited only the rich; only about the quarter of the respondents, more rich than the rest, believe that the reforms have benefited the poor as well.

Next Page: Surprising Statistics

To put it simply: if anyone cared to put policies of economic reforms on the political agenda and ask the public for its opinion, there is every chance that these policies may be voted out.

But from this it shouldn’t be concluded that the condition of ordinary people has actually deteriorated in this period. When quizzed directly about that, very few people, even among the rural poor, say that the economic conditions of their family have worsened in this period of economic reforms.

Optimist about future

Most of the people reported an improvement or stability in their economic conditions. Add to this their overall sense of satisfaction with their economic conditions, positive view of the country’s economy and their optimism about the future. And again remember the figure of 3 per cent who know about these policies. Now you perhaps know why a policy that does not enjoy public approval can be implemented in a democracy. At least for now.

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