"Turn of the turtoise" by T.N.Ninan - Book review

"Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true" - Joan Robinson

In early 2000s, an Indian diplomat serving in Nepal visited the Kosi barrage, built across the unstable river whose water volume increases fatally in times of monsoon. He was stunned to see the dredgers, whose work was to regularly clear the river of silt,were lying unused as they were under repair. The diplomat immediately contacted the Bihar government for immediate action but nothing ensued. As it happens ,in 2008, the Kosi floods happened leaving lakhs of people adrift and homeless. Later, it was known that the satellite maps of the river were not being accessed by water resources ministry . The sensors that provide data on water flows had stopped functioning long back. And thus even as the waters of Kosi surged ahead bursting banks, the government had no clue about the state of the river. It was a complete breakdown of government machinery. Snafu.

By narrating this incident , T.N.Ninan, in his book "The turn of the turtoise" underlines how scarily non-existent the government can be. But in the next page, he points out government's efficiency in mission-mode events like elections or Kumbh melas .Thus, in these two pages, the author sets the tone of his book . Despair and hope. This balance is what makes the book stand out from various other tomes which either take the tone of a "Mother India" or an " India : Emerging power".

T.N.Ninan is a veteran journalist who started his career in India Today. He specialised in matters of economy and this experience led him to take up the editorship of Business Standard, a champion of free markets, in 1993. In 2010, he took over as the chairman of the paper. His Saturday column in the paper has a dedicated following among policymakers and general readers alike. For such a career involving prolific writing and keeping weekend deadlines, it is a surprise that it has taken so long for him to write his first book. Or it may be precisely because he was caught in the unrelenting storm of journalism that it took him so long.

This book comes at a significant juncture in the post-independence trajectory of India when we have the first single majority government at the helm since 1984 and our country is trying to reclaim the high growth path which it had once traced in mid-2000s. The book does not focus on a single domain as such but covers multiple aspects which need to be addressed and discussed for India to march ahead. An interesting observation is that we have had our country compared to many animals - be it a tiger or an elephant or even a dragon. But Tinan takes the curious analogy of a slumbering tortoise but it's not all pessimistic as he clearly says that it is the tortoise's turn now.

The book is divided into five sections. In the first section of the book, the author lays a platform of numbers for the ideas to follow in the rest of the chapters. He argues how the 1991 reforms were not deep enough as they touched only the product markets and left the factor markets unreformed. Ninan reminds that our failures have been mainly related to government because it tried to bite more than it can chew -right from running watch factories to making failing airlines stay afloat.

In another sharply written chapter, Ninan reels out numbers like how China's income grew at a rate of over 10 percent in the decades straddling the year 2000,how it's foreign exchange reserves are twice India's GDP and how China has trumped illiteracy and poverty effectively to show that clubbing India and China together is a exercise in imbecility. Even as our priority sectors for manufacturing are basic ones like electronics and garments, China has moved on to loftier aims in high-end numerically controlled machine tools and ocean engineering equipment etc.

In the second section, the author covers manufacturing and private sector. In recent times, there is a huge focus on manufacturing through the "Make in India" campaign. The author stresses that India's cost advantage in sectors like garments in times of China's slowdown is not enough as there are other cheaper options available (Bangladesh, for instance). Thus , we need a wholesale reorientation of our hitherto rigid labour laws, focus on increasing the productivity of workers and undertake urgent large scale investments in infrastructure and above all, ease the process of doing business.

There is a separate section on the Indian state's curious mixture of overreach and under-performance. Ninan feels that government's noble intentions get scuttled by being blind to market realities. The anti-market mindset which we have inherited wrongly from Nehruvian days has made governments interfere with functioning of the marketplace through price controls, import controls and suboptimal public sector enterprises. Corruption is taken up in an inter-country comparison with USA's "Gilded age" when prosperity and corruption were bedfellows. The solution to corruption ,the author concludes, lies in stronger institutions, technology and more transparency in political/electoral funding. When it comes to poverty,  a decent case is made for direct cash transfers as it is less taxing on the governmental capacity to deliver. But the author wants more focus on delivery of merit goods like education and health without which mere cash transfers will amount to zilch.

In the section on Indian society, the author classifies Indian citizenry into four broad types based on expenditure per month per family. These are : Middle- class rich, aspiring neo-middle class, vulnerable no-poor and poor. He underlines how more and more vulnerable non-poor are climbing into the upper echelons in recent years. He believes the median family income will grow from Rs.22500 to Rs.40000 in ten years.

There is a separate section on how India deals with strategic issues like defence and foreign policy. Again,Ninan comes back to economics saying rapid economic growth remains the best foreign policy. In the climate change talks, Ninan faults India for clubbing itself with China i 2009 when China's per capita emission is much higher compared to India's. He also calls for emission caps to be based on emission intensity - emissions measured with respect to a unit of GDP.

In the concluding chapter, Ninan outlines three major trends that will be evident in times to come : huge spurt in growth of middle class, retreat of state from economy and devolution of powers from Delhi to state capitals.Some minor quibbles need to be mentioned as well. The focus on agriculture, education and health is kept to a bare minimum. Also, such a long book on economy could have spent more print ink on the interplay of politics and economy and how economically sound market policies which end up benefiting the downtrodden are not electorally viable. India is at a tantalising crossroad and the steps it takes now will have historical repercussions. Some of those steps can be learned from T.N.Ninan's book so that the tortoise ensures that it's turn counts.

The Turn of the Tortoise: The Challenge and Promise of India’s Future

TN Ninan

Penguin

Pp 368

R699