A silent revolution is taking place in India because of the significant changes brought about by this government without much media attention. But, over time, these changes will result in a betterment of life and in economic growth.
Consider, for example, the steps taken in water management. As Ajit Ranade, Chief Economist of the Aditya Birla group, points out, the success of the water conservation scheme Jalyukt Shivar Yojana launched by the Maharashtra Government, is significantly raising the groundwater table levels. In the drought year of 2014, over 5,000 villages and 10,000 hamlets were provided drinking water by tankers (using expensive petro product to supply the water). In the place of over 6,000 tankers used then, today only 152 are put into service.
Nilesh Shah of Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Co made the same point in a recent presentation. The government is using MGNREGA to conserve water, spending ₹40,000 crore to create a million water bodies. The fruits of this would become visible when groundwater levels would have risen to healthy levels.
Huge savings via LED bulbs
Another example is the saving in energy cost due to the step taken to import five crore LED bulbs. The large order gave the government the clout to bring down the cost of the bulb — from a discouraging ₹500 a piece in 2014 to a very affordable ₹50 now. As a result, saving in electricity cost is estimated at ₹12,000 crore; this is estimated to touch ₹40,000 crore shortly. Another silent revolution.
Other examples given by him of silent revolutions are the improvement in tax compliance after GST and digitisation linkages.
As a commitment to global environment, under the Paris Climate Change Agreement, India has agreed to have 40 per cent of its installed energy from renewable sources. This is likely to hit 55 per cent. Another silent revolution.
However, lots more needs to be done, especially in a pre-election year when optics matter.
The pace of decision-making must be improved — both, in the judiciary and in the bureaucracy. One of the easiest steps the judiciary can take (without any government permission) is to restrict the number of adjournments allowed to one per litigant. The famous movie dialogue of ‘tareek peh tareek’ must become a thing of the past. Why this is not done till now is a mystery. It seems the judiciary cares more about the richly-paid legal fraternity than about the suffering victims.
Part of the reluctance to take decisions stems from the consequences of taking an honest one, which would turn out to be the wrong one. They are then hauled up years later. Somehow this fear of taking honest decisions has to be removed. The consequences otherwise are undesirable.
For example, a UMPP, the Matrishi Usha Jayaswal Thermal Power plant in Jharkhand, is mothballed. Banks have lent it $38 billion which is likely to further push up their NPA woes. Why don’t they take the step of attaching, and liquidating, swiftly, the available assets instead of allowing them to rust and become worthless?
Similarly, why doesn’t the bureaucracy accept that under existing conditionalities of assuming both debt and an unwieldy workforce, Air India will never find a buyer, and therefore, take both burdens on itself, as the creator of these burdens? Delay in decision making only hurts; it rarely helps.
Yes, a silent revolution is on and the efforts will bear fruit. But, simultaneously, visible action needs to be taken against crooks, tax-evaders and defaulters, at a much faster pace.
(The writer is India Head — Finance Asia/Haymarket. The views are personal.)