Swarajya, December 30, 1961
Between ourselves, honest voter, these private monopolies created by the pernicious system of permits, licences, quotas and controls (to be extended now even to foreign capital which voluntarily comes into the private sector) make the Congress Party's rich friends richer, and the poor poorer. It is a close conspiracy; we have a battle between money and liberty, between dharma and atheism, between freedom and communism clothed in Congress robes.
If we could push ‘socialism’ through effectively to its goal and get all the incomes equally distributed, each one of us in India would get less than Rs. 25 a month! This is the socialist paradise—no story but correct arithmetic worked out from government statistics. What Government tells us is that the per capita national income would be the share of each one of us, if equal distribution became the law. Now no one requires to be told that this would lead to national misery and not to national welfare. We have also to deduct all the vast administrative expenditure involved in working out socialism, which would further reduce the net dividend.
If we do not go that far, but put a limit on the process and divide on the principle of equality only up to a desired point, we may get a little more than Rs. 25 a month each, but it would be undemocratic and untenable; because, putting into motion the principle of equality, you cannot stop with favouring only your favourites and leave the others in the status quo ante.
In spite of this laughable character of compulsory equal distribution through State policies, as arithmetically demonstrated earlier, the general fallacious idea persists in modified forms. Arbitrary levels are set, above which people should be forced to share. Every ‘socialist’ politician accepting the principle of moderation, sets a limit on wealth a little higher than his own level! This modified socialism is democratically untenable as already explained.
Forcible sharing of wealth will not only be equivalent to forcible imposition of universal poverty, but will for lack of adequate motive for hard work and vigilance certainly cause a decline in the gross national product. We must, therefore, stop planning and dreaming welfare through redistribution by law or pillage, but should start thinking about how to make people produce more, so that the total income available for voluntary distribution may increase.
People cannot be induced to work and produce more unless we furnish an incentive, and an incentive that is adequate. We have now the opposite of this, a constant threat of what you produce being stolen by law in the shape of increased taxes and legalized expropriations. This is what is being brought about by the Socialist pattern adopted by the Congress Party.
Distribution must be managed under freedom so that the incentives for production may be kept intact. The fundamental rights which were guaranteed in our original Constitution were not mere perversities of conservatism as our Congress dictators have been telling their gullible clientele, but were wisely conceived essentials for increased production. These rights are fundamental for progress and prosperity everywhere in the world and at all times.
A state of equality, even when and if brought about, cannot last longer than a week, if even that. A system of continuous watch and redistribution would be necessary to maintain the equality. Spies and officials having to be maintained at heavy cost, corruption and tyranny would be the order of the day, as every one who has fled from the tyranny of communist regimes will be able to tell. If the continuous spying and accounting and legislating should indeed be successful, there would be absolutely no incentive to create, make, invent or build. Meanwhile the population will be increasing, making the dividend smaller and smaller. All this is simple and clear, but there is no limit to gullibility and deception under adult suffrage; and it becomes necessary to repeat the simple truth as often as the deceivers repeat their lying promises.
The Swatantra Party’s objective is to give to the people of India good government which the Congress Party has failed to give and to restore the original freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution, which have been greatly curtailed by subsequent amendments at the instance of the Congress Party. These freedoms are the basic incentives for work, civilization and progress.
The Supreme Court has recently delivered judgments striking down the Kerala Agrarian Relations Act and quashing certain acquisition proceedings in Uttar Pradesh as being ultra vires of the Constitution even as it stands amended. The Congress Party has no respect for the Constitution. The Swatantra Party’s objective is to restore respect for the Constitution, to get annulled the amendments already passed and to prevent further Statist attempts to whittle down the freedoms inscribed in the Constitution solemnly adopted by the nation in 1950. The Swatantra Party has been described as a freedom-party, as a conservative party, as a party of vested interests. But it can be most correCtlY described as a party standing for the upholding of the Constitution. Th8 Constitution adopted by the nation in 1950 was in every sense a Swatantra Constitution which is now sought to be distorted in order to establish Statism.
This can and must be prevented by at least refusing to give to the Congress Party a two-thirds majority in Parliament which it now has and uses it dictatorially for amending out of shape all the swatantras inscribed in the Constitution. If the nation desires to keep the Constitution at least from further mischief, it must see that at least a third of the members returned to Parliament are Swatantra members and not Congress or communist.
