Commentary/ Mani Shankar Aiyar

The message is the same: Liberalisation for me, but, please, not yet for the firangi.

The CII would like us to change our priorities from government helping the poor to the rich helping themselves. Chidambaram has signalled that he will do so. He is, therefore their mascot.

There is a fly in the ointment, though. When CII talks about market-friendly policies, they mean policies friendly to themselves. They, therefore, applaud policies that lower taxes but are apprehensive of policies that lower tariffs.

Under the protection of a series of nasty socialist governments, the CII/FICCI/ASSOCHAM ilk built the sinews of Indian industry. Socialism, however, kept getting its cotton-pickin' fingers at the hard-earned rewards of the sinews of industry. What industry would, therefore, want is for the cotton-pickin' fingers to be taken off but the protection to remain.

Lowering tariff barriers and encouraging foreign investment means foreigners flogging their filthy foreign goods in the Indian market, thereby ruining the markets for Indian floggers. It also means fat cats from abroad investing in units that compete with homegrown equivalents and, worse, foreigners buying up what Indians, through the sweat of their brows and the grease of their palms, have built up over the years.

The problem is that competition, whether in goods or investment, is between unequals; the foreigner has deeper pockets; he can hold out till the Indian is ruined, then do what he likes in a market that becomes his monopoly.

It is this grievance which the business lobby is engaged in finding political spokesmen for. FICCI has found in the Bharatiya Janata Party a keen ear for swadeshi. CII has found its ear in those who accent their economics with a slight nasal twang. ASSOCHAM is still finding its feet, let alone a willing ear.

Doesn't matter. For, whatever the accents of the argument, the message is the same: liberalisation for me, but, please, not yet for the firangi. Give us, they say, but sotto voce, a few years more to catch up. Pressed for a ball-park figure, as CII would say, for a number as to how many years is a few more, if no one but you is listening, they suggest a 100 might be just right.

I can't say I don't sympathise with them. It must be terrible to find what you've worked for all your life up for grabs when a foreigner, who has no virtue other than his pockets are deeper than yours, passes through the gate marked 'Enter'. Ask Ramesh Chauhan. Ask Lalit Thapar. Ask DCM. Ask any passing Godrej. Ask even any Tata-type.

Deeper pockets mean unfair competition. True, the pockets of Thapar, Godrej, et al, are deeper than 99.9 per cent Indians. That that small fact puts 99.9 per cent of Indians at precisely the same disadvantage vis-a-vis the Indian fat cat as the Indian fat cat faced with the firangi fat cat is another matter.

The Indian poor are organised in political parties. The Indian fat cats are organised in the chamber of commerce. The dialogue and dialect between them goes by the name of democracy. The Indian rich, having the same voting rights as the Indian poor, have the perfectly legitimate right to organise themselves to press their political demands.

Only, they shy from calling these demands political. Political demands, they aver, are what are scrawled in chalk on walls. What they ask for is printed by laser-jet and spirally bound. Their memoranda, therefore, constitute legitimate business grievances, not vulgar political slogans. The fact remains, however, that the grubby request for an IRDP loan is addressed to the same political authority as is the nudge between the ribs and the wink in the eye for a few billions from the Indian Bank.

The CII, FICCI and ASSOCHAM are just as political as the trade union or the local SC/ST association.

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