Carpe diem – seize the day! That was Horace. By any indicator, the economy was healthier in 2004 – 8 to 9% growth, with speculation about it creeping up to double digits and overtaking the Chinese figure. India was one of the bricks in BRIC, not Indonesia. We needed growth for poverty reduction. Debate over poverty lines notwithstanding, if head count ratios are lower in 2011-12, growth is responsible. We needed growth to generate government revenue, revenue being required for social sector expenditure. But growth wasn’t guaranteed. It needed nurturing.

By 2004, because of earlier reforms, manufacturing was freed of licensing. Private investment and consumption expenditure thrived, courtesy low fiscal deficits and interest rates. Road and telecom connectivity improved. Banking and civil aviation were liberalized. Health and education indicators began to improve and there was VAT, a stepping stone for GST.

The agenda should have been clear, further liberalization and reforms. No reforms are zero sum. That’s a myth. Liberalization hurts some segments, even if there are net overall gains. That’s precisely the reason one reforms when the going is good. One seizes the day. If not, the night eventually seizes you. Those reforms aren’t about FDI in pensions, insurance, civil aviation and retail alone, or Chapter V-B of the Industrial Disputes Act. Even with a “socialist” agenda, there was plenty to do – agriculture, service sectors, efficiency of government expenditure, decentralization, non-manufacturing industry, judicial systems, non-telecom infrastructure.

PM is primus inter pares. He is much more than that. PMO is not quite a Project Management Office. Coalitions are a fact of life, as are state governments headed by political parties not part of the ruling Delhi dispensation. With a PM willing to govern, these can be handled, as can inevitable tussles between various government ministries and departments.

But MMS was made of milder stuff. Exhibiting traditional traits of a risk-averse bureaucrat, he desired to out-source governance. This wasn’t just NAC, which pre-empted elements of governance. Even when there was no such preemption, MMS outsourced to GoMs and e-GoMs, commissions and committees. Cabinet lost its clout, apart from the kitchen cabinet part.

It is impossible to govern such a federal country if the PM cannot pick up the phone and talk to a CM. (Relations with a neighbour have been jeopardized on such an apparently trivial issue.)

Did the so-called dream team of 1991 not know basic economics? As a pre-eminent member of the dream team, even if his economic views are more malleable than most, did MMS require a Bhagwati to lecture him on what is no more than common sense? What went wrong? In the barrage of comparisons between NDA and UPA, people tend to club UPA-I and UPA-II together. There’s an inherent problem there.

All said and done, UPA-I did nothing significant in reforming. There was RTI and MGNREGS, both driven by NAC. But for most of UPA-I, till 2008, there was legacy of high growth. The external environment was benign. Costs of inclusion, such as they were, could be handled.

It went horribly wrong thereafter. Yes, there was the whammy of global slowdown. But there was the greater whammy of 2009 elections.

We don’t do much – the economy seems to chug along. We don’t do much (the MGNREGS story was misread) – people vote us back. Why bother to rock the boat?

Unfortunately, the boat was already in choppy waters and had developed multiple leaks. There were procedural issues, land, forest and environmental clearances. Following the lead set by PM, bureaucrats turned risk-averse.

Privatization amounted to privatization of public assets. There was increasing state intervention in multiple sectors. Pre-emption by government crowded out resources for private investments and consumption. Presumably, dream team members didn’t immediately realize how serious it was. Consequently, successive pronouncements on how good growth and inflation numbers were soon going to be – became objects of ridicule. Indeed, government became an object of ridicule.

Meanwhile, an increasingly young and urban India poured its angst out onto the streets. The trigger may have been corruption and sexual offences. But underlying this was expectation of high growth, jobs, low inflation. All these took a hit. By any indicator, the economy is back to 1991 crisis levels. There’s the IMF, as a back-up or packup plan. The nightmare team has pushed the clock back by 12 years.

In this mess, as primus inter pares, primary culpability is with MMS. He is a silent man. But he has a lot to be silent about and a lot to answer for. There is no longer a P.V. Narasimha Rao to provide direction and leadership. Though one job has been preserved, in general, there is neither growth, nor jobs. The minor flurry over the last 6 months cannot swiftly undo damage of 10 years. What will be the MMS legacy? As a general principle of an individual’s development, you build on your strengths. Contrary to what is suggested, you don’t try to plug your weaknesses.

That’s a no-brainer. The MMS legacy should have been in economics. That’s what he knows about. But that’s what he ignored and failed to tap and build. Therefore, posterity will remember him as someone who, goaded by PVNR, freed the shackles in 1991 and brought them back in 2014.

The wheel has come full circle and the sense of déjà vu is inevitable. Meanwhile, MMS has set his heart on foreign policy (interpreted mostly as a non-policy vis-àvis Pakistan) and what a mess there has been with all our neighbours, more than one volunteering to undertake excursions (or is it incursions?) into Indian territory. Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China – the list is long. The crisis isn’t economic alone.

Perhaps one should have the complete Horace quote. “Don’t ask what end the gods have granted to me or you…While we speak, envious time will have fled: seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the next.” One decade of MMS time has fled and there is little to envy him for. The gods did grant him an opportunity. But he chose to squander it.