What Modi should do now: Roosevelt, not Wilson

FDR’s ‘New Deal’ programmes to provide jobs to millions is a template to emulate before our economic crisis worsens

Confusing myth with history and reading Indian history and its figures wrongly has been central to BJP’s Hindutva politics and idea of India. Now, that wrong reading of history and desperation to co-opt its figures has been extended all the way to America, and to India’s economic future.

To compare Narendra Modi to Woodrow Wilson, of all America’s presidents, is strange, but that’s what Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat did in a newspaper article some days ago. Shekhawat compared Modi’s new slogan ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ to Wilson’s ‘America First’ slogan, writing that Wilson “after understanding that too much global dependence had made America a victim of Spanish Flu and World War I, announced the ‘America First’ movement to be economically self-dependent, that went on to make America a superpower in the next two decades…Narendra Modi’s clarion call of Atmanirbharta is reminiscent of the America First policy, the alchemy that actualised the American dream.”

Shekhawat should fire his research team. Obviously, neither he nor his research team know what Wilson’s ‘America First’ was about, so they imagined its chronology, causes and consequences to fit their narrative.

Wilson’s ‘America First’ was not about economic self-reliance. It was the articulation, at the start of World War I in 1914, of a foreign policy of neutrality between the warring European blocs – the Allied Powers and the Central Powers -- because he wanted America to be able to trade with both sides. Indeed, Wilson reduced America’s high tariffs, which he said, "cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world…and makes the government a facile instrument in the hands of private interests." What’s more, Wilson’s ‘America First’ died a quick death, and he took the US into World War I.

America did not become “a Superpower in the next two decades”, either. It slipped into the Great Depression of 1929-32 (the reasons for which, again, the minister gets wrong) and then into World War II. It was out of the Great Depression and WWII that America emerged the greatest power in the world. It was for the most part under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), and it was not merely because America built a formidable war machine and the atomic bomb in those years.

If Modi wants to emulate any US president at this moment in our history, it should be FDR, specifically his ‘New Deal’.

The most innovative part of the New Deal were two programmes to provide jobs to the millions rendered jobless by the Great Depression and the millions more who were coming into the labour force. These were the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The CCC was Roosevelt’s ‘Tree Army’. FDR put unemployed youth between 18 and 25 to work to conserve and enhance America’s natural beauty and build the infrastructure for people to go out and enjoy the ‘Great Outdoors’. Between 1933 and 1942, the CCC employed some 3.4 million youths, who lived in tented camps across the country and planted over three billion trees on public lands, built hundreds of parks and wildlife areas, trails and roads.

They strengthened bridges, check dams and vegetation for erosion control, built dams, dug ditches (yes, the very thing that Modi made fun of about our own NREGS) and channels for flood control, rejuvenated forests, and landscaped and developed public camp and picnic grounds, lakes and ponds. They were given food, clothing, shelter and a wage of $30 per month (of which they had to send $25 home to their families!). They were also given literacy and job training to prepare them for jobs when the economy revived.

Today, again, as unemployment has risen, the US Congress is set to take up a draft legislation called the Great American Outdoors Act to revive the New Deal-era green infrastructure in a programme that will once again provide jobs and give a fillip to outdoor recreational activity – now a $778 billion industry with over 100,000 businesses built around Americans going hunting, fishing, biking, hiking, camping, diving, skiing, etc.

The WPA employed millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, and in the seven years the programme ran, they built golf courses, airports, hospitals, sports stadia, schools, parks and playgrounds, bridges and public buildings, and more than a million kilometres of roads and highways.

The WPA also gave livelihood to some 40,000 writers, artists, musicians and directors through five ‘Federal One’ projects. The Federal Writers’ Project employed over 6,000 writers who, among other things, created the American Guide Series, guidebooks for towns and historic sites across the US. The Historical Records Survey project, employing over 4,000 people collected and conserved US historical records. The Federal Theatre Project paid over 12,000 performers who gave more than 1,000 public performances each month, produced 1,200 plays, and introduced dozens of new playwrights. The Federal Art Project employed over 5,000 artists who, among other things, conducted art classes for millions of children and adults and set up over 100 art centres across the country. The Federal Music Project employed over 16,000 musicians who gave over 130,000 performances across the US and taught music to millions of children and adults.

The UPA government’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) provides a base programme and template for Modi to build on into his own New Deal for India. Let’s hope he takes the opportunity to do so, because millions of Indians desperately need it.

There are, of course, improvements and expansions needed. An urban counterpart of NREGS must be created, to build sustainable urban infrastructure. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the government also came up with a programme to employ writers, artists, musicians, directors to cause a cultural rejuvenation! And how stupendous it would be if millions of our youth were put to work to build the ‘Great Indian Outdoors’ just as Roosevelt’s CCC did!

Most importantly, NREGS itself and these new programmes need a passionate national champion to run them, rather than leaving them to be run by the ministries. Roosevelt had Harry Hopkins. Modi must find his Harry Hopkins, someone who does not think the NREGS is a “monument to Congress’ failures.”

The government has addressed liquidity issues on the supply side by announcing a package of easy loans to help various sectors of the economy, especially MSMEs, survive. But for it to work, it must urgently address demand-side needs – and that’s for jobs and cash in hand. For that, Modi must take the Roosevelt road at this juncture when India is set for hard times for the next 4-5 years, at least, if he wants to keep the country peaceful, stable and growing.

Of course, Modi can take the other road of pursuing a divisive social and legislative agenda and expanding the BJP’s IT Cell troll army and misinformation specialists to manage headlines to win elections. As a citizen, which road would you like Modi to take?