By Nalini Ranjan Mohanty
It was Iron Curtain in Stalin’s Russia and Bamboo Curtain in Mao’s China; the current central government would make us believe that it is the Golden Curtain in Modi’s India.
Joseph Stalin led a communist dictatorial regime in the Soviet Union and after the Second World War, and cast the central and east European satellite countries in the Soviet mould. Credible data was scarce. What his government said was the final word. Winston Churchill, then the British prime minister, captured the imagery well when he said: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”
A few years later, Mao faithfully followed the Stalinist steps to exercise an iron-grip over the Republic of China. He too smothered all open access to information. What Mao or his officials said were to be accepted as the final word. No questions could be asked by a Chinese or an outsider. Some described the scenario as a bamboo curtain hiding the reality.
Today Narendra Modi’s India is in a similar state. The government has withheld many crucial data. But Modi’s India, unlike Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China, is a democracy. How could he withhold information? After all, the democracy gives rights to critics and the media to raise issues.
The ruling party’s response has been: “If you can’t trust the government, you don’t deserve to be an Indian”. Can you find traces of Stalinist or Maoist arrogance there?
Recently I was watching a TV discussion on CNBC TV 18 on the state of India’s unemployment. The immediate peg was a revelation by the Business Standard, quoting the National Sample Survey Organisation survey report that “the unemployment rate in 2017-18 was at the highest level since 1972-73 – the period since when the jobs data is comparable”.
The report said that “the country’s unemployment rate stood at a 45-year high of 6.1 per cent during 2017-18”.
The same report tells us that “in 2011-12, the unemployment rate stood at 2.2 per cent.”
But then the pointing finger at the Modi government is not only because it has not managed India’s economy well resulting in such high unemployment, but also because it has sought to throttle all information regarding the employment-unemployment status.
The Business Standard report was a scoop. It quotes from a NSSO survey report, which the Modi government has persistently refused to make public. The National Statistical Commission, an autonomous body, that is mandated to approve the statistical reports of the NSSO, has done so long ago. But the findings are so stark as to give the impression that the Gandhi Dynasty, that the Prime Minister often derides, ran a far more capable government because ultimately that is the best government which can ensure full employment.
With such a dubious record of employment generation, the Modi government refused to lay the official NSSO data, duly approved by the highly qualified members of the NSC, on the table. Instead, it has authorised Amitabh Kant – the servile CEO of Niti Aayog, who is ready to do any bidding to keep his post-superannuation perks – to whitewash the NSSO report and bring out a sanitised version.
Remember, when the current government released the GDP back-series last November, which showed it in good light, it had bypassed the NSC (because it had professionals and they were bound to raise questions) and authorised the Niti Aayog to vet it. And Kant, as expected, did a hatchet job.
The series of insult has led to the resignation of two distinguished experts, P. C. Mohanan and J. V. Meenakshi, from the NSC last week. They went on record to say that they were sidelined, that they were prevented from discharging their duties professionally.
The manipulation or suppression of data is a glaring trait of a dictatorship, be it a communist, Nazi or a military dictatorship. India is still a thriving democracy.
Are we, as a nation, changing course?
(Mohanty is a veteran journalist based in New Delhi)
