Swarajya, July 23, 1966
Sri Morarji Desai wrote to me making a personal appeal that I should revoke my previously intimated decision declining to give evidence before his Administrative Reforms Commission. His distressingly generous letter moved me deeply but I had to stick to my former decision.
I believe that if the nation’s economy is to be managed as the present Government is trying to do, that is, if not wholly, largely on a State-controlled and stiffly regulated basis the administrative machine and its working should be altered and shaped to bring about the best possible results under that policy. Even if I entirely oppose this manner of running our people’s affairs from the government secretariats, I can see what that difficult if not impossible policy requires in the matter of administration. If, on the other hand (as I ardently desire and wish to work for with all the power I can put forth) this wrong policy should be terminated, and our national economy put on a free and competitive basis with maximum individual initiative and freedom, restricting the function of the State to its proper sphere, the administrative machine should be reformed and geared to that policy. The reforms to be introduced in the latter case would be wholly different from the changes that would have to be made if statism must be continued and made as effective and as beneficial as possible.
We cannot discuss administrative reforms in a concrete and useful way unless we know how the economy is to work—is it to continue as it now works, or in the Swatantra way? This is the difficulty which confronts me, and makes me abstain from giving evidence before the Commission. It is not a case of non-cooperation.
Sri Morarji Desai wrote to me making a personal appeal that I should revoke my previously intimated decision declining to give evidence before his Administrative Reforms Commission. His distressingly generous letter moved me deeply but I had to stick to my former decision.
He had no doubt a claim to ask for my evidence in view of my active public life extending for more than half a century. But apart from my present relative ignorance of the administrative machine’s composition and working, I have fundamental difficulties which I proceed here to set out.
I believe that if the nation’s economy is to be managed as the present Government is trying to do, that is, if not wholly, largely on a State-controlled and stiffly regulated basis the administrative machine and its working should be altered and shaped to bring about the best possible results under that policy. Even if I entirely oppose this manner of running our people’s affairs from the government secretariats, I can see what that difficult if not impossible policy requires in the matter of administration. If, on the other hand (as I ardently desire and wish to work for with all the power I can put forth) this wrong policy should be terminated, and our national economy put on a free and competitive basis with maximum individual initiative and freedom, restricting the function of the State to its proper sphere, the administrative machine should be reformed and geared to that policy. The reforms to be introduced in the latter case would be wholly different from the changes that would have to be made if statism must be continued and made as effective and as beneficial as possible.
What I have said must be sufficient to explain why I was unable to comply with Sri Morarji Desai’s request. The two economic worlds would be completely different from each other—one revolving round controls and regulations, the other round individual activities centred on free competition, with no large or small monopolies created by government licences. The administrative arrangements to meet the requirements of these two very different conditions would be so different from each other, that it would be impossible to consider the problem of reform in an alternative way and do justice to it. The set-up, the size, the character, the recruitment of officials; everything would be so different in the one case from the other, that it would be a futile waste of energy to discuss reform without knowing whether we want it for the one or the other kind of governance.
There is an enormous difference between government as liberal philosophers understand it and government as the regimentation school conceive it. The difference is something like that between iron and steel. The difference makes the two government types two different species. The administrative set-up for the one will not suit the other. My difficulty is one which every witness before the Commission should also feel. But some of them may take for granted that the present ruling party’s, economic policy must continue, and give evidence accordingly. But I do not wish to do this.
Others may mix the two things up, the need for freeing the economy and the administrative reforms the Commission is dealing with, and give evidence in what I would call a confused way. I am not sure if the Commission assumes that a change of economic policies is within the ambit of its enquiry. As far as I understand proprieties, it should not be the function of the Commission to discuss that issue.
This Commission should not have been appointed now on the eve of the general elections. It would be a big fallacy to proceed on the assumption that administrative reforms can be usefully thought out, isolated from the question of national economic policy. The total control which the present Government seeks to have over the economic activities of all the individuals composing the nation calls for a kind of administrative machine entirely different in size and composition, as well as in methods of operation, from what a free economy requires by way of government administration.
We cannot discuss administrative reforms in a concrete and useful way unless we know how the economy is to work—is it to continue as it now works or in the Swatantra way? This is the difficulty which confronts me, and makes me abstain from giving evidence before the Commission. It is not a case of non cooperation.
