NEW DELHI, Aug 20, 2004
Straits Times
Pranay Gupte
The colonnaded red sandstone buildings that British
architects raised in the heart of this green city between 1912 and 1929
have witnessed so much history - from the glories of the British Raj
to the globalisation of modern India - that the entire area has been
declared a 'World Heritage Site' by the United Nations. Deep inside
these sprawling buildings, political intrigue has always been the currency
of the realm.
Intrigue is precisely what's occurring these late summer
days in one of the sandstone edifices occupied by the Ministry of External
Affairs. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has awarded one of the ministry's
choicest constituencies - the 22 million Indians who live outside the
country, many of whom are wealthy - to the newly created Ministry for
Non-Resident Indian (NRI) Affairs.
Mr K. Natwar Singh, India's External Affairs Minister
and an accomplished writer and scholar, is in high dudgeon about this.
The minister for NRIs, Mr Jagdish Tytler - a veteran politician who
is India's longest serving Cabinet minister - shrugs off Mr Singh's
antagonism and promises that overseas Indians, who are said to possess
more than US$365 billion (S$628 billion) in assets available for investment,
will find his ministry a one-stop shop for their projects.
Their money is much needed by India, which currently
gets a puny US$3 billion annually in foreign direct investment (FDI),
including barely US$300 million from NRIs. In order to sustain a yearly
economic growth rate of 7 per cent, India must attract at least US$10
billion a year in foreign investment. Neighbouring China gets US$53
billion, some 60 per cent of it coming from overseas Chinese.
Even as he battles his colleague Mr Singh, Mr Tytler
has lost no time in persuading NRIs to open their wallets. He has received
a commitment for a US$2.7 billion industrial park in Bangalore. A Singaporean
of Indian origin has pledged US$400 million for developing indigenous
medicines. A Malaysian, also of Indian origin, is pouring US$40 million
into a shopping centre complex.
Since Mr Tytler's ministry was created in May - when
the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance came to power - more than
3,000 NRIs have contacted the minister expressing interest in investing
in India.
During an interview with The Straits Times, the minister
proudly displayed e-mail messages and letters from these NRIs. While
the missives were laudatory, many contained specific investment proposals.
'They aren't looking for concessions - they just don't
want to be harassed,' Mr Tytler said. 'They don't want to have to run
from pillar to post for permissions and approvals. My message to them
is: 'My ministry has been created specially for you. I will be your
protector in India.' These overseas Indians don't want to bring their
money just out of sentiment for India. They want good returns.'
The minister said that under the longstanding 'licence
raj' dominated by socialist ideology and statist bureaucrats, foreign
entrepreneurs were either barred from investing in India, or were subjected
to years of applying for approvals for which bribes were required. But
now, under Prime Minister Singh's market-oriented administration, the
buzzword is economic liberalisation.
'Indians are fed up with being jerked around,' Mr Tytler
said. 'Either we are serious about rapid economic progress, or we aren't.'
Along with changing the national mindset anchored in
socialism to free enterprise, Mr Tytler said, India simply had to improve
its infrastructure dramatically in order to better compete with neighbouring
nations for foreign investment.
'You can have all the big plans you like, but unless
the system is capable of handling the load, everything will collapse,'
he said.
His feud with Mr Natwar Singh is widely considered unseemly,
even though Mr Tytler contends that it is not of his making.
Like Mr Singh, Mr Kamal Nath, India's Minister for Commerce
and Industry, has expressed reservations about Mr Tytler's mandate,
privately arguing that the new ministry may well create more confusion
for potential foreign investors instead of clarifying matters.
Beyond personality differences, however, the feud points
to how regionalism affects politics in India, a nation of 15 major languages,
874 dialects, 29 states and seven federal territories.
Mr Natwar Singh is a Jat from a princely family in the
state of Rajasthan; Mr Tytler was born a Sikh in Punjab; and Mr Nath
is from Madhya Pradesh, a poor but resource-rich state where the wealthiest
class consists of dacoits who roam at will.
Prime Minister Singh - who is not related to Mr Natwar
Singh - is a Sikh, the first minority-class member to become chief executive
of a nation of 1.1 billion people, 80 per cent of whom are Hindus. In
forming his Cabinet, therefore, he had to contend with competing regional
claims for choice spots.
Mr Tytler had been part of several earlier Congress
administrations, variously holding portfolios like civil aviation, labour,
food processing, coal, shipping and transportation. He is considered
a skilled bureaucratic in-fighter, and a smooth politician.
'Let's face it - being a minister means that you have
to be good at administration, and you have to be adept at politics,'
Mr Tytler said.
'But most of all, you have to serve the people. My new
ministry serves overseas Indians, and it serves the national objective
of getting more foreign investment. I'm not one for making unrealistic
promises. But this much I can say, I do promise: Overseas Indians who
want to bring their money to India can expect total efficiency and honesty
from my ministry - and from me.'
Timely words. But Mr Tytler will be the first one to
acknowledge that there are those who are hoping he will fail.