Swarajya, June 9, 1962
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.
A new forum is being shaped for presentation to the hungry people of India! The object of the Forum is to develop and expound socialist measures. It is clear that the sponsors are happy with the socialism that is now shaping under the Establishment. They feel there is something rotten in the State of Denmark.
The Forum which has been adumbrated by Mr. Nanda and approved by the Prime Minister may easily grow into a super-Cabinet. If it is to be a research forum it would indeed be a case of the cart before the horse. We have had the congress Party’s socialism all these years and three Plans passed for execution one after another, and taxes levied, inflation inflicted on the people, moneys borrowed in the country and from abroad, and all resources mopped up for the purpose. And now this proposed Forum comes on the stage tacitly confessing that the rulers did not precisely know what they have been doing all this for, and that wiser men will now be called in to debate and tell them about it. Yet the last general election was ‘won’ for this policy—so it is claimed anyway. There is a fifth wheel in the Planning Commission already which blurs responsibility badly enough. The Forum is going to be a sixth loose wheel in the set-up further to share the responsibility. Sharing irresponsibility would be a more correct expression and nearer the mark, because the more the sharing, the less clear is the responsibility.
Why did you do this?” “Because the Planning Commission so strongly recommended it.” Now, we shall have another excuse—” the Nanda Forum pressed for it.” This Forum will undermine the basis of parliamentary government, viz., discussion and debate in the two Houses.
What is at the root of Nanda’s and Nehru’s unhappiness, of which this Forum is but a symptom? At the root is loss of confidence in themselves. “We are in a mess,” they will not confess. But the confession is implicit in the proposal.
We invest our inheritance in buying a cow or what we thought was a cow. But after ten years of waiting and experience, we think it necessary to call a council of veterinarians to see what it is, a cow or only a lame ox, and if so to see whether they can change the sex of the animal (by means of ome of the new discoveries in that direction).
The inherent errors in the conception of the ‘socialistic pattern’ are being ignored and, therefore, wrong remedies are being explored. The fundamental and unalterable fact is that wealth must be produced, in order to improve distribution. It is also an unalterable law of nature that the production of wealth calls for incentives and freedom, and not controls and permits, and increased taxes, to invest in government enterprises. We now read with amusement that in Europe once Upon a time all doctors bled their patients for every disorder, even for unconsciousness resulting from accidents. This treatment looks too ridiculous for anyone to practice, but it was freely resorted to some decades ago with full, even fanatical faith. This is exactly what is now being done by our socialist rulers. Crushing taxation, everything done to prevent formation of capital, the systematic extinction of incentives, suppression of all initiative, and the placing of numerous irksome hurdles in the path of individuals and their efforts, these are the present economic and industrial policies—exact counterparts of letting out blood that was resorted to by the medical men of Europe in the old days.
Licensed monopolists making easy money for themselves and corrupt officials inefficiently managing nationalized business concerns are the unavoidable corollaries of State-management when it extends to fields which ought to be left to individuals and to the inescapable laws of the market. No Forum can alter this truth. An autocratic brain-trust, all-round compulsion, and slave-labour are the inescapable adjuncts of socialist regimes. Favouritism and corruption are the normal corollaries and companions of authoritarian regimes.
On the other hand, free economy makes wealth out of the national total of individual dynamism. The laws of the free market automatically check initiative and freedom from running amuck. If we want the country to become rich and happy, we should stand for these and not be afraid of being called by any names. Good ploughs, good oxen and hardy ploughmen raise crops. Any number of winnow-baskets or improvements in them cannot add a bushel to the harvest.
Fearing that under free economy, power will get concentrated in the hands of a few shrewd people, Mr. Nehru has succeeded in concentrating all power in the hands of a few bureaucrats and party bosses. This has become a vested interest in the present decade in India. This vested interest of the bureaucrats gives a slant to all advice now tendered to the lay rulers. No Forum will be able to cure these pathological conditions.
A very interesting item in the proposed rules for the Forum is the one that expressly seeks to prohibit members from “taking advantage of their connection with the Forum as a means for advancing political ends”. Most prohibitory laws give us an idea of prevailing weaknesses. Here is a clue furnished by one of Mr. Nandas rules for the new Forum. There are at the Centre 17 Cabinet ministers, and in addition double that number of non-Cabinet ministers, deputies and parliamentary secretaries drawing salaries and allowances. ‘There is no room for more,” says Mr. Nanda, and don’t come into the Forum for finding an opening there for you.” In spite of this warning of Mr. Nanda, those congressmen who are admitted into the Forum will deem themselves, and by continual contemplation become, a higher caste in the hierarchy. Their ambitions cannot be ignored once they are placed in position.
