主题:【文摘】只有一小部分人富裕的结果--看印度大选 -- 西风陶陶
Bloomberg Columnists
William Pesek Jr. is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.
India's Election Is Wake-Up Call for Markets: William Pesek Jr.
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Atal Bihari Vajpayee's election slogan was ``India Shining.'' The millions who don't feel part of the magic retorted with their own: ``We won't feel ignored.''
And they gave Sonia Gandhi's Congress party a victory over the 79-year-old Indian prime minister, who was so confident of re- election that he called elections six months early.
Vajpayee's biggest misstep, and the one many global investors will long fault him for, was not doing more to deepen economic growth in the world's second most populous nation.
His successes are well known: the fastest economic growth in 15 years, global information-technology clout, rising stocks, increased state asset sales and a huge pool of currency reserves. Good stuff if you're a member of India's 245-million-strong middle class. But if such trends don't trickle down to the other 700 hundred million, someone's going to pay. That someone was Vajpayee -- and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
``It seems that the BJP's `India Shining' campaign has backfired,'' says Samir Mehta, who helps manage about $3 billion for Lloyd George Management in Hong Kong. ``There were people who looked at that and realized that their lives hadn't benefited.''
It's something that's often missed by investors observing India's 8 percent growth rate. The government's top-down economic policies are winning glowing accounts in the global media and wooing capital back to Asia's No. 3 economy.
Providing the Basics
Like Vajpayee, though, many investors mistakenly associate rising stock prices and foreign direct investment with helping the vast majority of India's 1 billion people. And most of the population has nothing to do with the gleaming, high-tech call centers of Bangalore or Hyderabad.
Glossy magazine articles on India's entrepreneurs and yuppies rarely touch on the hundreds of millions of rural poor living at the margins -- and out of the spotlight. For many, life is a daily search for just potable water, never mind education, jobs and homes. Hundreds of millions in India simply don't have the basics.
Why does all this matter to global investors? Increasing prosperity at every level of Indian society is in their interest, and the process remains a slow one. Only when more Indians feel part of their nation's economic boom will they become the rabid consumers multinational companies seek. Only then will jaw- dropping elections like this one stop roiling markets.
Gandhi's Focus
Bond, stock and currency investors were taken aback by one of the biggest political upsets since India's independence almost 60 years ago. The 57-year-old Gandhi's late husband and mother-in- law were both Indian prime ministers who were killed by assassins. She is an Italian-born Catholic, and she'll now be running the world's biggest Hindu nation. She'll also rule the world's biggest democracy with the support of Communist parties.
Arguably, Gandhi won because she focused her campaign on the 300 million or more people who exist on less than $1 a day. She spoke early and often about bringing clean water, electricity and basic infrastructure to the rural poor.
Now, of course, it's time for Gandhi's party to turn pledges into action, and voters will be watching. She promised to deliver 10 percent growth a year, pursue the sale of state assets, spend more on power generation and restrain government borrowing so bond yields stay low.
There's reason to think investors need not worry too much. If India's disparate political parties agree on anything it's the need for economic reform. China's boom leaves officials in New Delhi little choice in the matter. And there's a powerful inertia in place leading India toward increased global competitiveness. The same can be said of peace with Pakistan.
Selling State Assets
The central bank, meanwhile, has cut its loan rate to commercial banks by 2 percentage points over three years to a 31- month low of 6 percent. This, along with lower government debt yields, is helping to spur economic growth.
The wild card is privatization. India sold a record $3.5 billion of state assets in the year ended March 31, including a stake in Oil & Natural Gas Corp. That swelled its foreign exchange reserves to a record $118.5 billion. Continued asset sales are crucial to pay for infrastructure, education and poverty reduction. Investors view the process as a litmus test for investing there.
Gandhi may be reluctant to sell off majority stakes in profitable state-run companies. The bigger question is whether she will slow privatization efforts in general to woo socialist parties, which oppose asset sales, to shore up her government. Any missteps here will trickle into financial markets and spook the very foreign investors India has been attracting.
The Rural Poor
India's rural poor are another force with which to be reckoned. They showed their political clout this week by ousting the nine-year government of N. Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party from the Andhra Pradesh state assembly. Naidu is a celebrity in India for his role as architect of the nation's success in information technology. The poor weren't impressed, showing just how powerful a force democracy can be.
Investors and the poor often seem at odds in the world of globalization. India's experience shows that the needs and desires of both groups aren't always so far apart. If the government doesn't satisfy those Indians with lots of money and those with none, it will suffer the same fate as Vajpayee.
To contact the writer of this column:
William Pesek Jr. in Tokyo at [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this column:
Bill Ahearn in New York at [email protected].
Last Updated: May 13, 2004 16:13 EDT
可以万事大吉。
Naidu is a celebrity in India for his role as architect of the nation's success in information technology. The poor weren't impressed, showing just how powerful a force democracy can be.
India's experience shows that the needs and desires of both groups aren't always so far apart. If the government doesn't satisfy those Indians with lots of money and those with none, it will suffer the same fate as Vajpayee.
我觉得印度的民主制度确实运行得不错。当大多数人不能从经济增长中获利的时候,他们有机会、有权利要求改变现行分配制度。
而这正是民主制度的隐患。
例子我就不想举了,相信不少人有比我更深刻的体会。我觉得民主制度的软肋在于制定政策时效率比较低下,需要考虑各方面的利益,经常会有各方面的阻力。但是相对来说政策出现重大偏差的可能性也大大减少了,对于民生有重大影响的政策改变遇到的阻力会非常大,执政党通常会保持重大国家政策总体上的连贯性。所以我觉得民主制度对于国家的稳定发展比较有利。在这一点上,即使在执政党内部,民主也比非民主有优势,以我们国家为例,党内相对民主的时期的经济发展就比个人崇拜时期的经济发展要好得多。
民主机制的好处在於及时修整行不通或不合理的政策,但也有可能令人没有远的目光。
象加拿大铁路这样差不多把联邦政府搞垮的作法我看在民主机制下是不可能被坚持下来的,最后可能成了战国长城,你一段我一段。但正是这铁路使加拿大成为一个统一的整体。
专制的政策不连贯具有更多的随意性,当然,这上面没有一刀切,非黑即白的,只不过谁倾向于某一方面多一点而已。
目前中国的发展势头不错,温总理也是个能人,只是我现在觉得集权的效率优势有减弱的趋势,很多中央的正确决策无非贯彻到地方。贫富悬殊越来越大,真的有点害怕中国出现大的振荡,最终受苦的还是老百姓啊。
加拿大铁路的生存和发展正体现了加拿大民主制度的活力和能力。
印度大选所体现的正是中国所缺少的。中国的改革措施,很多都是以损害多数人的利益为代价来获取少数人的利益。
中国改革开放二十几年来,长官意志太多而缺乏真正自然发展的东西,早年的深圳、海南,后来的上海都是政策决定者意志的城市受益者(深圳和上海)或者受害者(海南),宝钢和上海磁悬浮则是项目上的不良体现。
加拿大那时是民主国家?嘿。
她的智慧,绝对值得俺一鞠躬;同时拍案长啸,为什么不再等一等,才公布啊!!!!
Indian Congress Leader Gandhi Declines to Be Premier (Update3)
May 18 (Bloomberg) -- Sonia Gandhi, who led the Congress party to a surprise victory in India's elections, said she won't be prime minister. Stocks rose on speculation former Finance Minister Manmohan Singh may get the top job.
``I have always followed my inner voice,'' Italian-born Gandhi told a meeting of her parliamentary party in New Delhi. ``Today that voice tells me I should not accept this post.''
Gandhi, 57, whose husband Rajiv and mother-in-law Indira both served as prime minister and were assassinated, stepped aside after protests by opposition parliamentarians over the prospect of a foreign-born leader. The meeting ended without a decision on the post, and Gandhi did not say when she would make an announcement.
Her decision may bolster Congress and its allies, which beat the rival Bharatiya Janata Party in elections that ended on May 10. While Gandhi didn't say who would be prime minister, Indian stocks rose on speculation she would step aside in favor of Singh, 71, who a decade ago helped boost economic growth by opening the nation to foreign investment.
``Singh would be extremely well-received by the market,'' said Humphrey Carey, who oversees about $4 billion of emerging- market stocks at F&C Management Ltd. in London, and said he has been increasing his holdings in India. ``Singh has demonstrated that he is pro-economic reform.''
Singh's Record
As finance minister in 1991, Singh cut import tariffs, opened industry to foreign investors including Ford Motor Co. and AT&T Corp., and removed state controls on companies. He was also governor of India's central bank from 1982 to 1985.
The NDTV 24x7 television channel reported that Gandhi was considering turning down the premiership, and that Singh might be named, shortly before the market closed. The 30-share Sensitive index, the Mumbai stock exchange's benchmark, jumped 371.86, or 8.3 percent, to close at 4877.02, the biggest one-day gain since March 1, 1999. The S&P/CNX Nifty Index of 50 stocks on the National Stock Exchange gained 113.5,or 8.2 percent, to 1502.25.
The gain almost erased yesterday's loss, sparked by concern that opposition to Gandhi would paralyze her government and that communist parties allied with Congress might undo policies that spurred the fastest economic growth in 15 years.
``By renouncing the post, Sonia is proving a point and yet saying that I am not for self-grandeur,'' said B.G. Verghese, an analyst at New Delhi's Center for Policy Research. ``Manmohan has an international image and has championed reforms. He has an unblemished character. This shows that economics is going to be in the driver's seat.''
Congress Allies
The Congress party won 145 seats in the 545-member lower house of parliament and is poised to form the new government with the support of 72 members from a dozen other parties. With communist parties promising support, Congress will cross the 272- seat mark needed for a majority.
Protests by the Bharatiya Janata Party of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee against her foreign origins caused ``emotional distress'' to Gandhi, said Congress party official Salman Khurshid. ``It is an attempt to wreck a moment of glory and happiness for the whole country,'' Khurshid said.
Gandhi, who was elected unopposed on Saturday as the party's leader in parliament, paving the way for her to be prime minister, had promised a ``purposeful, effective government focused on accelerating employment, growth and investment.''
The rise of Gandhi, a Roman Catholic in the world's biggest Hindu nation, makes her fourth in a political dynasty that has headed the 119-year-old political party that ran India after independence from Britain in 1947.
Nehru-Gandhi Line
Sonia's husband Rajiv, assassinated during the 1991 election campaign, was prime minister from 1984 to 1989. He succeeded his mother Indira, murdered by her Sikh bodyguards. Indira's father, Jawaharlal Nehru, died in his bed after ruling the nation from independence to 1964. Her son, Rahul Gandhi, 34, is a first-time member of parliament in the new house.
Investors and executives say they are counting on Singh to sustain the momentum in an economy that the government estimates grew 8.1 percent in the year ended March 31, the fastest pace in 15 years, by spending more on roads, power plants and irrigation, and attracting domestic and overseas investment.
``He is one character who has stood by what he has said, and has not been controversial in any manner,'' said Sunil Kant Munjal, managing director of Hero Honda Motors Ltd., India's biggest motorcycle maker. ``As far as reform goes, he clearly was one of the more progressive people.''
To contact the reporter on this story:
Bibhudatta Pradhan in New Delhi at c [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Ravi Velloor at [email protected].
Last Updated: May 18, 2004 12:48 EDT