Happy Days Are Here Again?
Asoke K. Laha,
President & MD, Interra IT
The other day, a friend of mine asked me to give my take on the year just passed by - 2011. I had a doubt that he expected a short answer - either good or bad. I did not relent to his prodding and kept mum for a while. Had I said the year just left behind us was a good one, he would have thought that I was out of my senses. The perceived double-digit recession showing its sinister manifestations across the world, the US refusing to respond adequately to the post-slowdown blues, fear of loss of employment looming large globally, financial mess in the Euro zone, catastrophe in Japan, signs of slowdown in China and back home, India threatened by a combination of factors like inflation, low-growth syndrome, drastic sliding of the rupee against the greenback and the alleged policy paralysis, etc. are well-known. Yet, I refrained from giving a straight answer.
He prodded me further, this time bringing into focus my domain area - Information Technology. He wanted to know how much the Indian IT industry would have benefited from the rupee slide - from around Rs.45 a dollar to close-to Rs.54. I told him theoretically, the assumption that exporters would benefit from depreciation of the local currency against all other currencies is valid. But in practice that does not happen in the medium and long term. I do not want to bore you with the economic fundamentals how export sector alone cannot thrive in the midst of overall gloom and slowdown. Nor do I wish to deal with Information Technology in this piece. Let me digress from the usual stuff.
Let me go back to the conversation with my friend. Yes, I refused to give a good rating to the global economic scenario. The other option for me was to tell that the year 2011 was bad. But still I kept my decision under wraps. How can I say that it was a bad year only because there was an economic downturn? What about the advances the world has made in other fields? I tried to spot whether there is any perceptible silver lining that the year 2011 has provided for. I tried to list out those happy auguries in the midst of gloomy environment that gripped the world.
The year 2011 was a leveller in more than one sense. I do not take any vicarious pleasure when net assets of the world billionaires take a severe dip. But that had happened in the year passed by. No longer could we read in the media, the hyped-up asset base of rich people and stories of people who have made to the billion league. India had to shed its ubiquitous aura of a trillion dollar economy as rupee continues to wobble no matter how solid was our credentials to be in that league.
There is an adage that when one door closes the other opens. Economically, we might not have faired adequately in the year gone by, but have scored several points on the social fronts. Right to information, right to education, Lokpal and Lokayukta (which are still awaiting Parliament's nod) are historic legislations that can inscribe strong layers of accountability, openness and a higher degree of governance in the system. I feel that we are now moving towards a people-centric regime, snapping our bonds from a dispensation known for corruption, political highhandedness, opaque and discriminatory. Yes, the pace towards that goal is painstakingly slow, but the civil society has become aware of their rights and I have no doubt that the momentum that the movement has achieved cannot be dissipated and it will be taken to its logical end sooner or later. A good governance code will insulate us from misdeeds and help us to think creatively and in a futuristic manner.
What does the year 2012 portend? As an incorrigible optimist, I feel that the coming year will have more hopes than despair. It may sound apocalyptic, but my gut feeling and intuition dictate me to believe so. My first reasoning is that the US economy may show more buoyancy than what that had demonstrated in the last few years. Signs of recovery, though weak, are there in the horizon. Euro mess is likely to ease with lead role being taken by the peers in the Union like Germany and Great Britain, who will not only bail them out from the mess but also prevail on the partners to restrain their expenditure and policy framework to come out of their profligacy; corporations across the world would learn from their past mistakes and would realize that the illusions of being rich without any asset base to support is like a house of cards can collapse at any time; governments will realize that only equitable growth and fair distribution of wealth are the key to peaceful coexistence of the citizenry. The new Administration that will assume office in the White House in the US will increasingly realize that there cannot be islands of prosperity in the vast ocean of economic deprivation. Back home, rights of civil society will be increasingly heard and they would assume an important stakeholder in the administration. Do I sound more as a Utopian - I do not think so. Those who feel that I have gone overboard should judge me on the basis of the piece that I will write in this column January next year - 2013.
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