During the UPA regime, the communication gap between India Inc and the Government widened, and corruption was all pervasive. The confidence of not only the corporate world but also of the common was shaken. This led to the massive flight of millionaires out of India
Politics and economics cannot be driven in different directions. There has to be synchronisation between the two for rapid growth and a sound economy. This writer read a news item recently which said that between 2000 and 2014 more than 61,000 millionaires have left India and shifted base overseas for various reasons like security, child education, and tax. This figure has been published jointly by the New World Wealth and lIO Global. Most of these Indian entrepreneurs and industrialists migrated to the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and the United Arab Emirates.
In general, people leave their country and migrate to other nations in search of livelihood and to create more wealth. But here in India, people who migrated were rich, well settled in life and were prospering in the country. What made them leave this countryIJ One simple answer can be that the millionaires, like the commoners, were feeling insecure in their own land.
To understand why this may have the case, one needs to look at the Governments in charge during the period under study. For the majority of the period, it was the Congress-led UPA regime that was at the helm —from 2004 to 2014.
In contrast to the general impression that there were only two centres of power in the country during that time — the first being former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and second, Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi — in reality there were multiple power centres within the ruling coalition that pulled the Government and its policies in different directions. Mr P Chidambaram, who was the Union Minister for Finance from 2004 to 2008, took his instructions from 10 Janpath and did not care much to consult Mr Singh. As a result, the economic policy lost its direction — inflation was high and investment was low.
Mr Chidambaram became the Union Minister for Home Affairs in 2008, a year before the lok Sabha election of 2009. later, he was replaced by Mr Pranab Mukherjee. Once Mr Mukherjee entered the North Block office, he started reversing some of the policy decisions of his predecessor.
Mr Mukherjee had his own preferences and likings for some corporate honchos. This distrust reached a flash point when Mr Mukherjee found some bugging devices in his North Block office. This was denied by the Government and Mr Mukherjee himself — under pressure from 10 Janpath — but the fact remains that at that time Mr Mukherjee and Mr Chidambaram did not see eye-to-eye.
This dispute was corroborated when Mr Chidambaram returned to the Finance Ministry after Mr Mukherjee become the President of India in 2012. Mr Chidambaram indirectly but publicly blamed Mr Mukherjee for the bad economic state of the country, even though a reputed economist like Mr Singh was supposedly at the helm.
Among the UPA allies, Nationalist Congress Party leader and former Union Minister for Agriculture Sharad Pawar hardly paid any attention to the job he was entrusted with. Consequently, the farmers’ plight worsened and, in his home State of Maharashtra, farmers were committing suicide by the dozen. But Mr Pawar was busy managing the cricketing affairs in the country.
Mr Pawar’s protégé, Mr Praful Patel, was in-charge of aviation and effectively turned the national carrier upside down when he merged Air India and Indian Airlines, despite objections from Mr Singh. As Civil Aviation Minister, Mr Patel also purchased an aircraft fleet that was not needed, causing a huge drain on the airline. He allotted prime slots and routes to private airlines, also causing huge losses to Air India. The national carrier passenger share also shrunk considerably. The result: Even now, Air India is suffering losses and it may take huge financial bailout by the incumbent Minister of Finance, Mr Arun Jaitley, to make the national carrier a viable enterprise again.
The Congress failed to rein in Messrs Pawar and Patel, fearing that they might pull out of the Government — just like the party leaders initially feared taking action against A Raja when the 2G spectrum scam surfaced. The Ministry of Defence was under an honest Congress leader, Mr AK Antony. But he was too timid to take any major decisions. The result was a depletion of the inventory of arms and ammunition and inadequate number of fighter planes and submarines. The three Forces felt demoralised.
On top of it all, the UPA Government, especially the Prime Minister’s Office, created an unnecessary scandal by ringing false alarms about how the Army was going to stage a coup and overthrow the Singh administration. The UPA Government suspected then Chief of the Army Staff, General VK Singh, whose only fault was that he had challenged a technical error regarding his date of birth in the Supreme Court.
Those in business and enterprise felt that the UPA Government was drifting away from well-set economic policies and that the national interest was at a discount. Each Ministry was functioning independently. The Prime Minister’s Office became one major source of corruption with Mr Singh’s principal secretary directly influencing policy decisions, involving thousands of crores of rupees.
The 2G scam, the Commonwealth Games scam and the coal scam shook the confidence of the people. Industrialists and leading corporate bodies like the Confederation of Indian Industries, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Indian Commerce and Industries voiced their concern over the state of the economy and the drift in governance under the UPA.
The communication gap between India Inc and the Government widened and corruption was all pervasive. The confidence of not only the corporate world but also of the common was shaken. In this situation, large number of investors withdrew. Many, who had an established enterprise and business, feared that their capital was getting stuck. Worse still, they feared losing their investment. Such was the sense of despondency that thousands of millionaires moved out of India.
(The writer is a Rajya Sabha MP)