Need of the hour: multipolar plural economic model

(No one asks how many industries and how much investment can create one billion Jobs: need of the hour for government of India?)
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There is a wonderful economic philosophy; a traditional Gujarati will tell you if you ask him about business: however meager the income may be, one should always be having a minimum of three to four alternate sources of income in one’s life, so that even if one source of income dries up; the other two will sustain one’s life. It is a functional economics that is fundamental to the idea of currency in capitalism – Transactional value in demand and supply. There will always be demands in life but there is also an inevitable life cycle for every particular demand.

One type of soap is not enough as people will ask for many, one type of toothpaste is not enough as people will ask for many and one type of rice is not enough as people will ask for many. For every product, corporate world knows this fact very well. Even as their one product does very well in market; they bring out alternate products and its variations to sustain the market. They know there is a demand for variants and also they know each product has a shelf life and life cycle.

Strangely when it comes to macro economic model, the same corporates tend to believe that monopoly alone is the economic model suitable for our country and in a bizarre approach, most of our influential economic intelligential agree with it without questioning!. They argue, industrialization is the only economic model for income generation in our country and it should occupy the central position in every macroeconomic policy by the government. To augment their position, they want to equate all parameters of human civilization including agriculture, water, trade, local economy, media, culture and parliamentary democracy with industrial parameter of production, man-hour, output and profit.

Sadly even as they have sustained economy through most of human history than the hundred year old industrialised economy, most of them will fail with corporate capital augmentation parameters of productivity and profit. Post globalized India since 1992 suffer from this pecuniary syndrome of GDP benchmark. Agrarian crisis of rural India precipitated by successive UPA and NDA Governments tells no other story. For a long time now, agriculture is considered as non-viable economic component in comparison to industry in terms of its GDP contribution. They have even coined a new terminology for policy support for agriculture, SMEs and cooperatives –Subsidy or in other words a liability for the nation and the same policy support when extended to Industry will be termed as incentive or in other words nation’s responsibility towards job creation.

But no one asks how many industries and how much investment can create one billion Jobs: need of the hour for government of India?

One has to be insane to believe that industry can ever achieve even one millionth of that impossible numbers but unfortunately our policy makers are convinced! For their unipolar macro economic model, they have systematically destroyed rural economy – or localized agriculture, cooperative and SMEs, the largest employment generators of this country, by eroding the fair playing fields, policy support and political justice.

The evidence of outcome is disastrous. India witnessed the largest agrarian crisis unparalleled in history both in terms of mass suicides/ migration and crop failures. Land and environment became the most contentious issue with massive popular unrest, discontentment and subsequent radicalization among the rural population. The unipolar economic argument for Industry and GDP based evaluation of human capacity built has eroded the people’s faith in the system- the idea of justice in Indian republic.

The European economic cooling that is taking place now and recent Chinese market driven global economic crisis and its consequence (and many such instances before) tells us no other story: the complete dependency on industry can unleash the catastrophe of unimaginable proportion to unsuspecting victims including collapse of nations.

It all points to one fact : the need of the hour, a multipolar plural economic framework where components can operate independent of each other to a great extend and one system’s vulnerability will not erode the capacity of the other. Elaborately speaking, application of the traditional Gujarati business wisdom: many sources of income will never dry a sustainable income.

It is not say that the role of industry should be reduced from national policy framework. Today, in world of economics and human living, Industry and corporates have a very large role to play in its formation and sustenance. Not only do they generate employment but also in an economically developing country like India, industry enable us with the capacity to resist and defend our sovereignty and political independence from global economic and industrial onslaught including global corporte highhandedness. The problem arises when it argue for the unipolar economic model of industrialization as the lone economical model. In India, this has been further complicated by the way this argument is implemented. Capitalism is implemented as socialistic model, where it not only seeks the tax exemptions and wavers but also seeks government interventions and incentives like in socialism to run the business (many corporate survive on government subsidy and state owned loans) and in socialistic frameworks the policies are implemented with capitalistic parameters of productivity, effectiveness (?) , capacity utilization and delivery! Functionally both frame works are undermined and failed.

Considering these factors, India should immediately revive, restore and implement egalitarian economic policy frame works for agriculture, cooperative sector and SMEs along with industry on equal footage. All of them should largely function as independent but interdependent at the crux. But value of the money should not be compared with industrial profit.

There is this famous wisdom, perhaps by Bernard Shaw “ A poor man in front of a palace will never be worried about the millions the King earns, but he will be worried about the poor man sits next to him earning few more pennies than him”. This anecdote beautifully explains the fundamental economic principle of value of money as wellbeing than profit. Its talks about the intrinsic connection exist between the wellbeing and earning: that one’s wellbeing is bound by one’s own related localized parameters than parameters of unrelated universal systems, even as it encompasses the total to that localized parameter is only a part. It can be operated under the same currency and for every economic strata of society, the perceived notions of value of money and wellbeing can be independent of the value and profit of the other strata of society.

This will generate the maximum employment and social wellbeing as these systems are highly localized and can be if not complete, but for a large extend be independent of the universal valuation and economic fluctuations.

If one count the number of possible jobs that can be created under agriculture, Cooperatives and SMEs, it will any day out number the industry by hundreds of thousands of times.

-It will bring the rural wellbeing, an urgent need of the country today, as most of the Indian villages are becoming virtual battleground as a consequence of economic and industrial policy frameworks pursued so far.

-Rephrase and consider subsidies as incentives.

-Give equal importance to Agriculture, Cooperatives and SMEs equal standing on macroeconomic policy frameworks. Extending support to cooperatives will solve the landholding fragmentation in rural India.

-Implement the industrialization of SEZ landholding across the country fast and treat them at par with other economic parameters.

-Let all these economic parameters be operated parallelly and independent of each other in terms of policy framework, implementation and in operation.

Otherwise the rural unrest is going to bring down the nation’s development as a price for their non-inclusion in nation’s economic process. It is already proven the capacity to unleash economic catastrophe, the unipolar capitalistic economic model of universal economy can unleash on unsuspecting victims and nations. Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, Brazil and now China, the list of countries took the brunt of economic violence by not of their making (China could be an exception??) is un ending. If we continue the complete dependence on industry, India could be the next. Also there will be the rural unrest emerging across the country that can undo whatever left in prosperity as a residual in policy framework.

A Multipolar or plural inclusive economic model is need of the hour.