Wednesday, 9 January 2019

The ‘Poor’ ,whoever, are ‘blessed’ !

Political Economy comes a full circle . Mr Modi, at his mocking best , assured the opposition in Lok Sabha that he could never ever imagine abandoning MGNREGA “a living reminder of monumental failure of sixty years” to eradicate poverty. That was in 2016. Three years later, in 2019, in a move rhapsodised as a political masterstroke he announces jobs reservation for the poor , another genre of the very same policies that it derisively declaimed ‘povertarian’  ? 
After all, “ Povertarianism is any mindset, belief, or political philosophy which focuses on the lowest common denominator at the expense of the general or long term good.” 
Parties ride to power promising to end hunger, income inequalities and social tensions. Some strive to do it through state control of means of production and distribution of income, measures broadly termed as welfarism ; others go the libertarian way- freeing factors of production, entrepreneurship ,trade and markets from all controls, praying to God Almighty that sufficient incomes trickle down from economic activity to raise the general well-being of masses.
On the evidence of rising poverty in sinking Latin American economies where it had a free run libertarianism isn’t all that virtuous, and povertarianism the regime itself discounts. Initially, Modi Sarkar made libertarian noises but a Suit Boot Ki Sarkar fusillade muffled it. Modinomics then flirted with crony capitalism for a while before Rafale exploded. Now we are back to where we began in 2014 -the much maligned povertarianism in the run upto 2014 elections in new guises. 
That is but only the apparent trajectory. For the masses in these five years have seen neither much of libertarianism nor povertarianism, but only an intense ,inexorable and implacable advance of  “Votetarianism”- no-holds barred pursuit of stratagems that have the potential to positively influence voter preferences to the exclusion of all else in political economy. 

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