The Etiology Of Controls

Controls over the economy of India came into being for coping with emergencies during the war. After the war was over, instead of terminating these controls, the officials of the Government kept them up for reasons which are obvious to those who know the appetite of officials for exercising power. Once having tasted the pleasure of non-justiciable authority over moneyed people, the members of the public services maintained the regime of regulation, and found many plausible reasons for it and indoctrinated those who guided policy. When the Congress Party took over the government of the country, the officials convinced the interim ministers, who were new to the business of government, that without controls there would be a shortage of the respective commodities and terrible public distress in consequence. The new Government accepted the advice of the senior officials, and regimentation and controls continued under the National Government though there was no war, or other emergency, and industry and commerce could have been left to the laws of free economy. Thereafter came the notion of producing progress in a spectacular degree. The ambition of the Congress Government to demonstrate its own and the nation’s potentiality, after emancipation from foreign rule, led to a conspiracy of action, so to say, between the Congress Ministry and the official hierarchy to maintain and stiffen the regime of controls and regulations. The appetite for power motivated the officials, and ambition to produce spectacular progress in India, and earn the admiration of the world, led the policy-makers in the Congress to accept official advice for controls of all kinds to be placed on the economy of the country. In addition, the officials succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear of scarcity of all kinds and the politician ministers succumbed to it. Then came Mr. Nehru’s socialistic pattern as the goal of the Congress. This enhanced the need and the importance of all sorts of controls. The officials welcomed the adoption of a creed, in which controls of all kinds and concentration of authority in Central officials hands were inherent. The logical conclusion of the socialism of the Congress and the official appetite for power over individual citizens and their activities coincided. Hence the enthusiastic and loyal acceptance of the Congress policy of socialism by officials who in their heart of hearts knew that it was neither practicable nor was the true way to increased production. Often does intelligence thus yield to appetite and work itself up to advocacy of what it knows to be erroneous. A third element soon came into operation. Party men found good business in the system of controls. This appetite was even keener than that of the officials. Many of them found the monopolies created by permits and controls to be an easy way of becoming rich and their position in the party opened up a new life for them. The party’s support for a system that gave them such grand opportunities to display their importance, and materially to profit, was a very powerful third element in the maintenance of controls, and socialism gave them a specious electioneering point in addition. The vanity of achieving spectacular things, the power appetite of officials, and the greed and corruption of party men, these three elements sustain this unwanted and retrograde permit and licence regime in India, while in war-devastated lands, in other parts of the world, their diligent people rebuilt prosperity on the basis of free economy. And from them we are not ashamed to borrow vast sums for fulfilling our plan-less Plans. It is hoped that the permit and licence regime and the rule of a party which is wedded to that pernicious source of corruption and hurdle to progress will be overthrown at the ensuing general elections, in spite of the huge funds placed by those who benefit by that system at the disposal of the ruling Statist party.