Is it a crime to be an industrialist in IndiaIJ The Prime Minister does not think so and frankly nor should the Opposition
The Prime Minister is right, he does nothing wrong in meeting and talking to industrialists. The accusation made by Congress president Rahul Gandhi that this is a ‘suit-boot ki sarkaar’ (a Government for industrialists) is a very shallow one. Shallow, because at the end of the day, even a poor Dalit farmer would likely want his/her children to wear a ‘suit-boot’. Modi’s contention that he met industrialists openly and worked with them for the development of the country instead of kowtowing to them behind ‘closed doors’ was an important statement, even in a country as mired in the politics and economics of social justice.
Modi has been accused of being far too close to fellow Gujarati industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, Chairmen of their eponymous industrial conglomerates. It is true that Narendra Modi has known both these men for a really long time and has interacted with them intensively, after all, Gujarat is the home to these mens greatest industrial assets, the Jamnagar refinery and the Mundra Port. The fact is that Modi, as the Gujarat Chief Minister, recognised that industrialisation led to economic benefits for many. Of course, in his urge to promote industrial development in Gujarat he made some bad calls as well. When he offered land at Sanand to Ratan Tata to move his Nano plant from Singur in West Bengal, he gave it on extremely favourable terms, but while the Nano won plaudits from the media, it was a commercial disaster. And that is the way of the world, but the Government in India does not have the bandwidth to invest in new industries and nor should it. India needs more companies to thrive, it needs more companies to rise to the top of the global charts it needs private money to grow economically.
One assumes that the Opposition realises this for the large part, but the fact is that the Opposition believes that this is a perceived weakness of Modi. However, keeping business and businessmen at a distance does nobody any good and in today’s day and age, we need businessmen. And while Rahul Gandhi might continue his misguided attack on Modi and his ‘friends’ one must realise that the enactment of the GST and the Bankruptcy Code even though the latter has been diluted slightly are monumental reforms this Government has managed that attack the crony capitalism highlighted by the 2G spectrum allocation and coal mine allocation cases under the Congress-led UPA. A lot of the bad loans being suffered by Indian banks today are thanks to the profligate loans given out by Congress Finance Ministers. While they were never seen together with Congress leaders, the precarious state of the economy was thanks to these businessmen. If anyone was the ‘suit-boot’ sarkaar it was UPA2. Industrialisation and industrialists are important and they should not be thought of as the devil incarnate.
