Common Man Pays It In Blood

Concentrated attention on the repayment of our foreign loans is the present slogan. And it is right. The cry is, however, worded commercially so as to avoid the evil smell of bankruptcy. It is concentration on the 'promotion of exports'. The hope is that we raise exports not only to keep the difficult current payments position going but also to save enough, to clear, some day, the Himalayan sum of borrowings from the West. Our exports to Asian countries do not help in this. We must undersell in Europe and America. We have been clearly warned to expect higher prices for all commodities for buyers in India-for all commodities, because one can't pay higher for certain commodities and sell one's things at the same old prices. It means a rise in all prices and also many, many more curbs and controls and-prohibitions in the internal market which again necessarily involve scarcity and more extended black-marketing, as we have been authoritatively warned. Competition in the export market certainly means selling at rates below the rising cost of production in India, which means fresh direct taxation and heavier indirect taxation. Let us remember that all finance is produced by the suffering people and not by the Finance Minister or the Congress Party, whatever may be the illusions created. The party issues pamphlets, thought to be cleverly written, defending the borrowing from abroad and the printing of currency at Nasik. These modern imitators of good old Mohamed Bin Tughlak, the genius who printed leather money, these modern Tughlaks do not produce real money at their press. The shadow money that they pump into the economy are advances taken from enhanced prices of all articles in the Indian market, so that the common folk who buy what they need to carry on, so as to keep their children alive, pay the exact amount of the printed money and more through the prices they pay for everything: and prices are minted out of sweat and tears. Thus are our foreign loans to be repaid. Wishful planning not based on resources and proper credit founded on export potentiality, as good businessmen would plan, but based on mere cold war conditions- this has led to this terrible result. The castles in the air ridiculed in the fables cost only a little physical jolt or dislocation when the dreamer wakes up; but the cloud castles our Government has been diligently building have cost a great deal of debt, with consequent real national misfortune and misery.

     These castles in the air are not even well-built shadow castles, but are jerry-built. They are indeed a challenge to all of us, as the P.M. has said. He is sure it is going to be not by the people of India. Yes, they will meet it because they are helpless. They will pay through the nose for it. For until a man dies, there is blood in him that can be squeezed out directly and indirectly. It is not the industrialists that pay taxes. It is the people who buy from the industrialists who pay both what the government takes from the industrialists and the businessmen, and what their greed and their fears of disfavour and oppression make them pay to the political party behind the Government. The ultimate cashier is the common man, who pays in blood and tears for all the other people's payments, by way of taxes and for so-called donations to party funds. To expect repayment of foreign loans by a supreme effort, at increased exports, is like a householder hoping to repay old family debts, when he is unable to meet even his own daily bills.

     The challenge must be met by voting against a party which has deceived and corrupted the people, and which has forgotten its duty to care for the welfare of the people, in its hunger for perpetuating itself in power.