From the Consulting Editor's Desk

The results of the recent elections to the Parliament are metaphorically encouraging—encouraging, not because the electorate has put the UPA in the seat of power, but because they have simply belied many of the pre-election fears. To an appreciable extent, the current mandate has shunned ‘regionalism’. A ‘national trend’ did emerge, though not to the extent desired—the combined seat share of the two national parties in the Parliament has just gone up from 283 in 2004 to 322. Importantly, the electorate has put in place the much-needed ‘promise of stability’ by returning the UPA to power with an unexpected number of seats, besides showing their place to forces that have earlier expended their energies more in pursuing issues other than national interests. A crumb of comfort for the nation as a whole!

The changed scenario offers a new scope to the government for strengthening the national security, both externally and internally. And no national security is possible without political and economic security to the people. It means, the government has to address the issue of creating a social safety net that covers the need for food, education and healthcare of the poverty-stricken people most urgently. Here, what importantly matters is ‘efficiency’ in delivery of the promised benefits to the intended groups. To ensure that this happens, the new government must strive to reduce the discretionary power of politicians while simultaneously strengthening the functioning of independent institutions of governance.

The electorate has indeed put India into an altogether new orbit, and it is now up to its political leadership to put it on a stable growth trajectory that ensures comfort to every citizen. Which is why, initiation of poverty eradication programmes that too, on a massive scale, has become the national priority. But it is likely to be constrained by the current slowdown in our economic growth. Nonetheless, what matters most today is sustained high economic growth, for unless additional wealth is created, no poverty eradication programmes can be undertaken. It means, economic reforms in a big way—at least launching of such measures would act as confidence-boosters. Hopefully, there would be little noise around this time when the government pursues new reforms. However, it does not certainly mean unbridled economic reforms. Reforms are to be initiated solely based on our convictions/native wisdom—that ensure our financial structure remain in a good shape despite global breakdown—and not based on Western dogmas.

No doubt, striking a balance between the pro-market and pro-poor policies is a great challenge to the new government. Yet, there is no escape from such political moderation—at least that is what the recent mandate of the electorate appears to say: fix the disarrayed governance and reform the economy to pave the way for ‘inclusive growth’. Against this backdrop, it is interesting to note the electoral studies carried out by Sonali Bhattacharya and Shubhasheesh Bhattacharya to identify the reasons behind the swing of electorate. Their study reveals that the economic factors such as consumer price index and availability of food grains are the most important determinants of the election results followed by communalism, while anti-incumbency factor, law and order situation, and international issues have very little or no impact on election results. These exploratory findings clearly indicate that the government must act decisively to deliver economic goods, both to the wealth creators and the dependants on such wealth creation.

In the pursuit of economic growth, governments, however, cannot ignore the harm to ecosystem—harm for instance caused by indiscriminate consumption of oil for maintaining urban transport systems. That is what, Richard Ingwe, Felix E. Ojong, Ekwuore M. Ushie and Walter A. Mboto from Nigeria have argued in the next paper. Looking at the fact of urban transport system’s immense contribution towards greenhouse gas emission, they argue that Nigeria should switch over to a more reliable and environmental-friendly alternative fuels such as the CNG, which has been successfully tested on the Indian roads. The authors also opine that exploration of CNG, besides improving air quality in the urban centres, would also help Nigeria, a nation rich in natural gas, in becoming an exporter of gas to Europe and West African nations.

We then move on to the empowerment of urban women in India to encourage them to participate in local governing bodies. Prabhat Datta and Payel Sen argue in their paper that reservation of wards for women in urban centres may at the most improve quantitative participation of women but if qualitative participation is to be ensured, many complementary interventions that can overhaul the patriarchal Indian society need to be initiated.

As a part of poverty alleviation programme, the Government of India has been actively promoting self-employment as a means of earning livelihood through the scheme, Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, launched in 1999. Rajeev Ahuja and Indranil De have analysed the performance of the scheme and found that contrary to the common belief, subsidy has no role whatsoever in explaining the performance of the scheme, but the effectiveness of the lending institutions does matter to its performance. They have also found out that the states where the government could place proper infrastructure to execute the scheme with a better fiscal commitment have made a mark in its successful execution.

As climate change and its adverse impact on mankind is being debated with great concern by the scientists and politicians as well, Hrabrin Bachev proposes an interdisciplinary approach to manage agro-ecosystem services that can ensure human welfare with specific reference to Bulgaria, which can throw open new research avenues for identifying better management tools to govern agro-ecosystems across the globe.

Moving away from ecosystems to political systems, we have Snehalata Panda, the author of the last paper, who argues that the US, which is pursuing its foreign policy of dominating the internal affairs of other countries under the pretext of ensuring expansion of the humanitarian values, is in fact adopting interventionist policies—soft and hard power approaches—to ensure its supremacy.

- B. Ramesh Babu Consulting Editor