Great men think alike

The West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Bandyopadhyay may be ‘ridiculed’ for her plans to turn Kolkata, the place where I belong, to London, the city where I have been living for over a decade now, but her way of thinking has now found a taker in no less than the US President Barack Obama. Apart from being ‘harbingers of change’ in their own constituencies, Bandyopadhyay’s economic policy of going on a spending spree without much concern for the health of the exchequer has now evinced interest for the Democrat President, who despite lot of hope and aspiration, is struggling to ensure a second term in office.

The rare Obama speech, delivered before the US Congress (on Thursday US Time, kept me awake till the early hours and a drowsy journey to work this morning lured me to frame a queer comparison between the two, which might be unfamiliar for any average person living outside West Bengal or without any clear knowledge about the state Chief Minister.

The speech that Obama delivered last night lacked much in detail, but the underlying message was crystal clear, ‘spend and get out of the economic mess' that the US and much of the western world is in. While there is a deliberate attempt to practice austerity (and carry out cuts) in the changed environment in Europe, yet Obama has taken recourse to the Keynesian way of creating demand through government spending. The impact of the stimulus packages, which the US and many other governments around the world announced after the demise of the Lehman Brothers, amidst the fear of a double dip recession, are debatable (although that was probably more of a historical necessity) but that did not deter President Obama from treading a path, which any conservative would find dangerous and self-defeating.

However, this is not the only manifestation of the desperation that Obama is facing in the run up to the presidential polls. In his much animated speech Thursday night, he couldn’t even resist the temptation of mentioning that the next round of elections were actually round the corner. “The next (presidential) election is 14 months away but the American people have no patience to wait that long”, quipped Obama. See the similarity in the rhetoric that Bandyopadhyay uses justifying her hasty approach: “I want move quickly and ready to learn from mistakes rather than do nothing”. Like Obama, Bandyopadhyay also wants to ensure jobs for the frontline staff, the teachers, nurses etc. build infrastructure projects (Obama calls for modernising airports and Bandyopadhyay wants to build new roads, hospitals etc.), plug government wastage and tax those who can afford to pay more (Obama mentions about Warren Buffett paying less tax than even his secretary).

Apart from the economic elements, there is also a shrewd political side to the whole saga. Despite being a Democrat, Obama has called for tax cuts which is very difficult for the Republicans to ignore and if they, because of their majority in the House of Representatives, try to block the President’s plan then there is a fear that the opposition would expose themselves to the American people (at least that is what the strategists in the White House are betting on.) On a similar vein, Bandyopadhyay can also combat any resistance to her plans, either from her opposition, including the CPI-M, or from her alliance partner the Congress, as being anti-development. At least the strategists from both sides are possibly thinking that the whole saga puts them in a virtual win-win situation.

However, the objective of this post is not to draw similarities between two personality cults operating in different circumstances or to compare Bandyopadhyay with Obama but to highlight what one of the greatest and influential economists of all times John Maynard Keynes, despite being a votary of the free market, observed during his time, that “even the government could fill in the shoes of business by investing in public works and hiring the unemployed”.

In an age when Keynesianism, as an economic doctrine, is considered to be exhausted and when the state plays only a secondary role to the private sector, Keynes might turn in his grave and say, “one day I saved Capitalism from Communist onslaughts and today I am back to save the whole world”.

Who knows?