France no more liberal !

Liberalism on the decline in the liberal France 
By Vinod Varshney

Though voters of France have given their mandate in favour of socialists after keeping them out of power for 17 years, the worrying trend in France is that voters have also extended support to the ultra-right political party of Le Pen. Not only the poor, uneducated and unemployed people rallied round this fire spewing ultra-right telegenic lady, but large number of the educated middle class, owners of small business and even employees of large corporations have also approved her anti-immigrant and anti-EU approach.  Irony is that the ultra-rightists have masqueraded their anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-Euro Zone stance under the slogans of human rights, secularism and gender equality. Le Pen calls herself a ‘feminist’ and has the highest following in the age group of 18-24. The rise of ultra-right sentiments has undoubtedly been facilitated by the severe economic crisis, which invited harsh austerity measures and created skyrocketing unemployment. 

(This piece was first published in May, 2012 issue of Lokayat)

 

Change in France

Socialists return after

17 years of ‘vanvaas’

By Vinod Varshney

Francois Hollande has been elected France’s first Socialist president in nearly two decades. This moderate socialist, however, could defeat the pro-American conservative incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy by a narrow margin. Why voters showed him the door at a time when he was more needed to bail the country out from the economic morass? They seemingly punished him for not delivering what he had promised five years ago.

But to be fair to him, Sarkozy had to face more challenging times than he could have anticipated when he made tall promises. One year after he assumed power, global economic recession came like a bolt from the blue. No wonder Sarkozy not only failed badly to generate jobs, but took unpopular decisions to reduce existing benefits of government and public sector employees. He increased the working years to earn eligibility for pension.

Many believe he could have still convinced the public on the need to make sacrifices, but his authoritarian and ritzy style made him unpopular. Socialists and other leftists took full advantage of this.  

Sarkozy took steps timidly

When Sarkozy was elected five years ago he had generated roseate hopes of giving new competitiveness to France. But he could not take necessary harsh measures due to political expediency, and whatever measures he took, they deeply shocked the working class. He increased the age of retirement from 60 to 62 to become eligible for the partial pension and from 65 to 67 for the full pension.  This led to strikes and agitations. This was truly a bad time for any leader as due to recession the rate of unemployment reached 9.3 percent.

Hollande has also made equally roseate election promises this time—he would increase the growth rate and generate jobs rather than compel people to sacrifice in the name of austerity. And he won the vote with about 52 percent in the second round. In the first round on April 22 he had got 28.6 percent votes to Sarkozy’s 27.2 percent. Though the margin is thin, Sarkozy has become the first-ever incumbent to lose in the first round.

He is Mr Normal

Hollande is popular with French common people, he is being described as a president who would lead a normal life—he used to go to work by scooter. People call him as Mr Normal who understands the cultural sensibilities of French society whereas Sarkozy continued to live a lavish life in spite of people’s suffering amidst economic recession.  Hollande has also promised to cut presidential and ministerial salaries by 30 percent as his first act.  

His other election promises include creating 150,000 new jobs, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by the year-end and reduce the share of nuclear power by 50 percent by 2025. It may be noted, France depends heavily on nuclear power, to the extent of 78 percent. The economic meaning of retracing from nuclear power is to find $444 billion to install that much generation capacity. Not an easy task for France.
Many wonder how Hollande would spur growth and increase welfare expenditure! His remedy is to tax the rich even more! He has declared to increase the marginal rate of income tax to 75 percent from the current 41 percent. Anybody having income more than a million euro would be taxed at this rate. Leftists wanted even higher tax rate, perhaps 90 percent if not hundred percent! 

France lost its AAA rating

France economically is in bad shape like many other European countries. It has lost its AAA rating and may find it difficult to get the necessary loan to keep its economy running if Hollande implements his poll promises. Fiscal deficit is already 5.2 percent and public debt is 90 percent of the GDP. France is already paying out around 2.5 per cent of GDP in interest payments, even though the interest rates are at record low level currently.

Hollande has articulated that measures to spur growth can be more fruitful for the sagging French economy than pursuing austerity. It may be recalled that in 2002 France had dropped its currency Frank in favour of Euro. Since then the monetary policies for France are decided by the European Central Bank. That was the reason the Sarkozy government had to resort to austerity measures and budget-cuts in welfare schemes.

Election-promises may be shelved

Whatever his commitment, the new president will have to play a cautious game while pursuing his agenda of growth. The pitfall in his plans is that he has made an optimistic projection of 1.7 per cent growth next year, and 2.5 per cent after 2013. Seeing the growth rate of the last 20 years which is just 1.6 percent, Hollande’s assumption seems too optimistic. Most economists believe France will grow by only 0.9 percent.  

Hollande is a novice, never had any post in the government, but observers hope he would show maturity and may shelve a few of his election-promises for the better times, but then there is immense pressure on him from the other two leftist parties which supported him in the second round to make his win possible. Since he needs majority in the National Assembly also, the elections for which would be held in June, he would not change any of his rhetoric just now. But he may proceed cautiously once he reaches the bridge to cross the sea of challenges ahead.   
(This article was first published in May, 2012 issue of Lokayat).  
If you have google account then click the link below to read the original article:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3wNwaRlTpBBZi0xWlNMZ0J4ZTQ/edit 

India's parliamentary system!

By Vinod Varshney

Indian Parliament’s journey through the last 60 years has been remarkable. A few members of Team Anna used derogatory language against parliamentarians-- called them ‘looters’, ‘corrupt’, ‘rapists’ and ‘murderers’-- yet if  Parliament’s overall performance  is seen objectively, it would be hard to deny that it has brought about remarkable changes in the country. It has truly epitomised the will and aspirations of over 1.2 billion people. It is the supreme custodian of their fundamental rights and interests.

There is no denying the fact that our political parties increasingly have given tickets to criminals and people have voted for them.  This is a big conundrum of our successful democracy. But this irony has to be judged in the larger context.    

Our elites rate our politics, politicians and Parliament disparagingly; they even do not go out to vote. For such people our democracy is in the hands of largely illiterate people, who are misguided to vote on caste and other sectarian considerations.  Indian polity is also vitiated by the influence of money and mafia; yet our nascent democracy has brought about revolutionary changes in our society and economy.  

Ending untouchability,  bonded labour, providing  assured minimum  employment to rural people, bringing Panchayati Raj and giving 33 percent reservation to women therein, triggering socio-economic transformation through  social engineering,  bringing transparency in administration through Right to Information, and now guaranteed education for children through RTE  are no small  achievements. It may not be long before Lokpal Bill to check corruption in the country is also passed.

Parliament also saw many bad periods the most horrendous being the internal emergency clamped down by Indira Gandhi, but our democracy came out of that unscathed and amended the Constitution to bar any repeat of such aberrations.  

The greatest achievement of our parliamentary democracy has been its ability to keep the country united against destructive pulls and pressures.   We witnessed the great but undemocratic USSR disintegrating. We also saw many countries go under military dictatorships, or destroyed in civil wars.  But India’s strength keeps growing.

Our Parliament continues to enact laws to promote the noble ideals of justice, liberty and equality enshrined in the Constitution.  No matter how ugly the situation sometimes, our parliamentarians have stood rock-like defending the rights of the silent millions. There were times when our adolescent democracy seemed teetering and on the verge of collapse. One remembers with trepidation our early experiments with coalition governments.  Some leaders advocated replacement of our parliamentary system with the presidential form as in the USA and France.  But every system has its plus and minor points; with proper checks and balances alone they will work.  Ours is working now superbly and it is the envy of the world, especially of our neighbours!

Certainly there is immense scope for improvement in our Parliament’s functioning.  Continuous shouting, walk-outs and repeated adjournments are not in the best interest of democracy.  Another aspect which shows our parliamentarians, at least some of them, in very poor light is their intolerance to works of arts, literature and even cartoons. These minor hiccups cannot shake the solid foundations our sterling democratic institutions if we keep unstinted vigil—eternal vigil.

(This article was first published in the May, 2012 issue of Lokayat)