India May 13, 2009, 9:24AM EST

India's Aviation Czar Pitches the Voters

To avoid putting off rural voters, Aviation Minister Praful Patel has to keep himself from talking up free markets on the campaign trail

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How does a politician who piloted India's moribund airline industry into its biggest ever expansion make his pitch for re-election when 99% of his voters have never been inside a plane?

"Very carefully," says Praful Patel, who has served as India's Aviation Minister for the past four years. On Patel's watch, new airlines have blossomed, decrepit airports have been rejuvenated, passenger traffic has tripled, and weaker carriers have been gobbled up by nimbler competitors in the natural order of a capitalist marketplace.

But in campaigning as an ally to the ruling Congress Party for a seat in India's Parliament over the past two months, Patel has barely mentioned his record as minister. (India conducts staggered elections, with voting in some states taking place last month and others taking place now; the campaign ends this week.) Instead, as he crisscrossed the hot and dusty plains of his constituency a few hours drive from the city of Nagpur, at the geographic center of India, his speeches covered reliable electricity, better roads, subsidies for farmers, and other issues important to rural voters. "I don't even talk of aviation, because it is not something that people relate to easily," he says in a phone interview from Dubai, where he's relaxing after the campaign. "I don't think that is what will get us elected."

Market-minded politicians everywhere must offset their reforms with populist rhetoric to get elected. But in India, this "high-wire act," as Patel describes it, is harder than just about any place else. That's because India's shift from a quasi-socialist economy into one that welcomes foreign investment and nurtures domestic entrepreneurs has been slow, and the hold that the communist parties and unions have on the national debate is still far too strong to ignore. "The left parties have a point of view that doesn't necessarily match what we consider as a free-markets approach," says Patel, who himself clashed with airport unions more than once in his tenure. "But that doesn't mean that if we decide on a certain path we can't do it. We just have to commit to it a lot harder."

Poverty Endures

Worse, the meager benefits of reforms have been limited mostly to urban areas. While a middle class has emerged in India's cities, that middle class often doesn't bother to vote. These people are far outnumbered by the poor masses living in the harsh Indian countryside, where the promised trickle-down of prosperity has been more of a hesitant drip. In the 20 years since reforms began, India's economy has more than doubled, but the poor's lot has remained largely unchanged. The number of children under 5 who are malnourished has dropped by just one point in the past 10 years, to 46%, and while per capita income—an inexact measure in a country with so many poor and so few rich—has doubled to about $800 a year, inflation has eaten away even that gain. In spite of India's much vaunted IT revolution, the sector employs no more than 10 million people. India's biggest employer is still the textile industry, in which workers (often women and children) toil away in sweatshops that produce clothes and shoes for the West.

This could spell trouble for whichever party prevails in the current elections. For the past month, 712 million Indians have had a chance to have their say in five regional rounds of voting, with results due on May 16. Although India has many well-intentioned, reform-minded civil servants and parliamentarians, it's getting harder to convince voters that free markets can help improve their lives. And while India has made tremendous strides in opening its economy over the past two decades, what remains to be done will be a much harder sell.

The biggest hurdle is labor regulations, something unions and left-leaning parties are loath to change.