Swarajya, October 29, 1960
A vested interest has grown for the ruling party in the ballot box and in the servility of people which can be exploited through the tentacles of the 'welfare State'. The conditions of government now brought into existence, viz., all-embracing controls and regulations of all kinds over the business community, and the issue of subsidies of all kinds to influential groups in the rural area, make the ballot box, together with general ignorance and cupidity, into a vicious and gigantic vested interest for the Congress Party.
Once put in power, the economic controls, licences and monopolies, which it has in its power to give and take away, furnish it with the means of perpetuation for all time. The party collects funds from the big companies that are under its power, and make any opposition practically impossible.
It is the same evil genius that leads them to say that they will not allow a caretaker government to rule during election. 'There is no precedent for this in Western democracies," they say. And there are people who still think the Congress is the only party that can rule, though this belief is growing less and less every day.
The ruling party proposes to levy fresh taxes, to the tune of Rs.1,650 crores, for bridging the gap in resources for the Third Plan; and as direct taxes appear to have reached saturation point, it is planned to levy indirect taxes, that is, taxes on commodities. Taxes on the poor always fetch a large return, as the spread of the levy is much larger than any tax on the richer classes. Additional indirect taxes which are contemplated by the ruling party will make the life of the poor unbearable, will retard the expansion of industries, and will probably in the end detrimentally affect the net returns to Government by way of taxation. It is not possible to choose the commodities on which the taxes may be levied so as to avoid these consequences.
The attempt to find money through indirect taxation will be a failure, leading progressively to retreats from the adventure with attendant loss of prestige. It would be far wiser for the ruling party to prune the Plan, to cut the coat down, instead of planning for a big coat hoping to buy more cloth when it is not available. Completed parts of a coat will not serve the purpose of a full coat. It is good to be wise before the event and revise the plan drastically. This from a most sympathetic angle. But there are other great errors.
The proper policy for our overpopulated continental country is to plan for the maximum utilization of unskilled labour throughout the country rather than to plan for things to be made with the help of machinery which calls for foreign exchange. Such projects should be taken up as will absorb human labour in the highest degree. It is not as if we have done everything that could be done by such labour. What about our roads? What about large scale housing for the masses? What about the numerous small water courses throughout the land, what about fairly pure water supply in the rural area? The list can be expanded still further. The biggest constructive problem of our country is the systematic and productive utilization of man- power and this is being neglected if not ignored altogether. The nation is being trained into the habit of wanting gadgets for everything, forgetting our numerical strength and the danger of unemployed human body power. It may be 'civilized' and fall into the 'advanced' pattern of life to have gadgets for everything, but it is not civilized for a nation to have a large load of foreign debts or to have a large body of able bodied men unemployed. Not only is it not civilized, but it is not prudent from the point of view of even mere survival.
The dependence on foreign aid as a reliable resource is not wise. The world situation is not favourable for this resource to be a dependable factor in a precarious calculation. The estimates of internal resources have been repeatedly shown by Prof. Shenoy to be erroneous and no answers have been forthcoming to what he has pointed out. More conclusive than any statistical figures as to real income in India is the grim fact that the consumption of cloth has remained stagnant at a low level during the past four years and the consumption of food grains has also not shown any improvement. It is below army or jail ration after twelve years of planned economy. Prof. Shenoy has shown that the implementation of the Third Plan will lead either to uncontrolled inflation, or a regimented economy adopting communist methods of physical suppression. He has shown that there is a real and serious gap in resources of Rs.3,125 crores and deficit financing of this magnitude must lead to hyperinflation.
The idea seems to be that all that Congress ministries have to do now is to use their official power for expanding and consolidating party influence, and somehow secure success at the polls in 1962, through favours done to key persons in business. State control starts by talking big but ends in giving monopolies to the chosen few who make profit for themselves and become vote managers and fund suppliers to the ruling party. Decentralization of government, too, similarly starts by talking big but ends in forming little tyranny clubs in the villages which work for the ruling party, in reality amounting to an extension of Congress committees with official power, expenses met by the public exchequer! There is no salvation for the people unless They get out of the clutches of the omnivorous Congress and make up their minds to throw it out at the next elections, giving the nation a chance to keep party and State distinct in people's minds, and save democracy from becoming totalitarian.
