The Rediff Special /Nani Palkhivala

'For the first time India looks less like a tortoise and more like a tiger'

For years, thousands of people turned up at the Brabourne Stadium to hear Nani Palkhivala analyse the Budget. Then, a couple of years ago, he cited ill health and announced that he would no longer speak on the Budget. This year, the MashreqBank in Dubai invited Palkhivala to address a distinguished gathering of nonresident Indians and members of Dubai's business community. This is what the legendary jurist had to say on the shape of things to come in the Indian economy:

In the last fortnight, three events have happened which make us feel happy and optimistic about the economic situation in India.

First, the Union Budget of the Indian government introduced on 28th February 1997. By and large, it is the best Budget ever presented in our Parliament. It is almost unbelievable that the same country where our so-called leaders suffocated the people by State ownership and state control for more than forty years, and where enterprising Indians in those years were allowed to enrich a hundred foreign countries but were not allowed to enrich their own, should now be presented with a Budget which does justice to India which was never poor by nature but was only poor by policy.

The country always had enough enterprise and enough entrepreneurship to raise our people from the sub-human squalor in which they had been enmeshed for so many years. Entrepreneurship comes naturally to Indians. Again, the trader's instinct is innate in our ethos. I am never tired of repeating that an Indian can buy from a Jew and sell to a Scot, and yet make a profit!

Under the latest Budget, economic transformation has come with a big bang and the period of collective insanity of the Indian nation is over. For the first time the country looks less like a tortoise and more like a tiger. The arthritic economy will start performing like an athletic economy.

It was only at the end of February this year that the world famous journal, The Economist, published a special in-depth fifteen page report on India, in which it critically examined the country's economic climate in global terms. In that report, India's markets are considered as among the most protected, regulated and over-administered in the world.

Now, as all of you know, in this Budget, the rates of direct taxes on individuals, residents and non-residents, companies and associations, have been slashed and the rates of duties on imports and exports have been drastically curtailed. At the same time, the ceiling on foreign investment has been substantially raised.

The second event which has served to restore India's confidence in its economic future is the visit of Bill Gates and his generous words of praise for India and Indians. In the words of Bill Gates himself, 'India is well positioned for the information age. Given the right investments in education, technology infrastructure and the Internet, India can become a software superpower. The country's advantages are many. It has an excellent university system. Its computer scientists are among the leaders of companies worldwide. Its technology centres in Bangalore, Pune and other places are well respected. Its corporations are at the cutting edge of technology development and deployment.' He further adds, 'The world is moving at lightning speed towards Internet-based computing. Software developers in India are already adept at using the Internet, electronic mail, telephone and video conferencing to do business with technological partners of its customers around the world.'

Bill Gates, who was recently described by Time magazine as one of the most important minds and personalities of our era, added what should have been obvious to every thinking person that 'education is going to be the engine of growth for the Indian information technology.' He was generous enough to say that Indian software engineers are 'among the best in the world. India can now start in a new era -- an era where the government and the people realize the necessity for making Indian industry globally competitive.

The third event which is of very far-reaching significance is the proposed meeting of the foreign secretaries of Pakistan and India after a lapse of three years -- to be more exact, thirty-eight months. No one who is a friend of Pakistan and India would ever want the present tension to continue between the two countries. Both the countries are almost ruined by having to spend on defence and armaments.

When India was on the verge of becoming an independent country, the great mystic and clairvoyant, Sri Aurobindo, said. 'The old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever..... Let us hope that this may come about naturally, by an increasing recognition of the necessity not only of peace and concord but.... by the practice of common action and the creation of means for the purpose.'

The Mahayogi hoped that divided India would once again be united 'under whatever form'. The exact form may be a pragmatic form but that is not of fundamental importance.' He declared that 'by whatever means, in whatever way, the division must go; unity must and will be achieved for it is necessary for India's future.'

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel assured our people that India would never subscribe to the idea of a Hindu raj. He described it as a 'mad idea'. In his memorable words, 'It would kill the soul of India.'

Sardar Patel felt that Partition would destroy the reality that we were one and indivisible. 'You cannot divide the sea or the waters of the river. As for Muslims, they have their roots, their sacred places and their centres here. I do not know what they can possibly do in Pakistan.'

He said, 'We wish Pakistan well and hope that under settled conditions, when they realise that we are really brothers and not two nations of different faiths and ideologies, they would come back to us.'

Sri Aurobindo believed that fundamentally the separate parts would return to the motherland to form a United India that all cherish.

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