“Best man gets the job,” proclaims Brad Delong in response to the selection of economist Manmohan Singh as prime minister for the new coalition Indian government after recent elections. I’d recommend reading the comments to his post, which seem to offer more analysis than the American press has generally done. In sum, the story is a dual one: the turnaround from a seemingly dominant Hindu nationalism toward a reassertion of India’s secular identity, and the forging of a leftist platform that seeks both social equality and development through trade and liberalization. Not too different, in other words, than a similar tightrope walked by Lula in Brazil.
Ghadhi’s electoral victory put the left back in power, but it’s Singh’s appointment that is the harbinger for continued liberalization. From the Times,
In a February interview with New Delhi Television, he called himself a socialist in the sense that “I regard the quest for equity, the quest for social equality as fundamental to running a modern economy, a modern society.”
In his public statements, he has shown himself to be a diplomat, or perhaps skilled in using an economist’s jargon to soften his message.
Rather than saying, for example, that industry needs greater power to hire and fire, he spoke in one interview several years ago of the need to “address the rigidities that are constraining growth” in the labor market. “Of course,” he added, “we must reassure the trade unions that our interest is to create jobs and not destroy industrial relations.”
Making such assurances will be a hard job - harder given the political machinations of India’s parliamentary system. But it’s heartening to see the right poltical economic instincts win out, at least for the moment.
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