General Election 2014: Economy (“Good Economy, Bad politics” ? )

Like any other dimensions for election 2014,Economist is also as deeply divided and are taking extreme positions.The two major schools of thoughts emerged and deeply divided are from Amarthya Sen  and Jagadish Bhagavathi,They had written and dissected the “Gujarat Economic model” in great detail.

On a broader prospective Bahawathi emphasis for more “Growth” and believe this will eventually tickle down to various weaker sessions and will more or less automatically follow.While Sen believes more important is distribution and empowerment of the “Weekest”, so that with there contribution the economy will grow.One emphasis on the need for creating more resources for re-distribution and other one emphasis for distribution of the current resources to create more resources.

Clearly a Chicken-Egg problem with out clear answers, the middle line is what everybody agrees so that it is equally important to create resources and also effectively distribute it to poor.

If you look back, the Vajpayee led NDA focused only on first and the UPA II continue the second approach even after the tipping point.Getting in to growth track is relatively easy with right policies but to fixing the distribution mechanism will need real administrative excellence.

What need to be distributed? Is it direct cash or is it subsidized food and fuel or is it cash for job which doesn’t create value.Economist agrees it has to be spending on Education, Health and Energy. But will any of that is effective in bridging rich-poor gap in India?

Coming back, Congress is clearly put more emphasis on the redistribution but without fixing the effectivness of the channel. Hence even if Sen was right, the tickle up effect didn't happen for Indian economy.

Only the agents benefited and most of the impact was in shadow economy rather than the real one. The flagship “AADHAAR”  to fix the distribution issue is still a non starter.

AAP lone focus is fixing this channel of distribution and fights against corruption with whatever methods seem possible.They don’t have any policies or doesn’t seem to have one to fix the already emptied coffers to even continue most of the Social Security schemes dolled out by UPA.

BJP, even though haven’t come up with a clear road map, the market see Narendra Modi the right choice to fix the growth issue.He hasn't opened his cards on the distribution question but time and again emphasis to fix the channel issue using more transparency and with the help of technology.

I don’t want to talk about any regional parties economic policies as there is nothing remarkable even from the Left.

Clearly on the economic front,BJP is the clear front runner from the available choices, AAPs focus on fixing the weakest link in the chain to fix the economy and thus  rank  second and Congress with his focus only on legislating more social schemes perform badly in this subject.

It is no more “Good economy, Bad politics” in India.

  

Really appreciate any comments if any are restricted to economic policy.