Congress Statism or Gandhian Way

Statism is the common characteristic of communism, Fascism, Nazism, and the socialism of the Indian National Congress. Indeed it is the working point in all these forms of authoritarian national policy, whichever group takes the reins of authority in the name of the people. All of them hope to achieve their goal of governance by State control of all activities, the freedom that is left to individuals being reduced to the barest unavoidable minimum. The expressed goal of all these types of authoritarian rule is popular welfare and the even distribution of the material things of life. The goal attracts popular support and that gives them power. Ideas of what is happiness may differ somewhat among them but there is broad agreement among them all to lay emphasis on material possessions as the only means of happiness. All these schools of Statism agree on this, that the authority of the State and the force of its executive arm can alone maintain the discipline necessary for maximum production of wealth and compel the sacrifice's necessary for its even distribution.

     Opposed to these schools of compulsion is the way of freedom and maximum provision for individual enterprise and incentive which Gandhiji advocated and which the Swatantra Party stands for. The profit motive is the impulse at the base of production and competition is the check on its unhealthy dominance. The inner policeman replaces the compulsion of the State and the authority entrusted to State officials, religion And conscience being the source of discipline, not secular sanctions. The drive for individual profit is checked by competition and the discipline of spirit, by which ownership is transferred into trusteeship.

     The objectors to this entrustment of the discipline of the individual to conscience and religion apprehend that this inner sanction may not work. But, on the other hand, authority vested in the officials of the State cannot be expected to steer clear of the temptations that always beset authority, and there is the universally accepted fact that efficiency of public management is inferior to management with personal interest. Since production is the primary requisite and basic element of national economy, what is necessary and most contributory for this must take precedence over what may possibly be better for even distribution. Realism calls for a balance between good and evil, and from this follows priority to the essentials of production rather than to the equality of distribution at the expense of production. The individual’s incentive is at the base of all production. In production under public management, the wages and salaries take the place of the profit-interest in private enterprise. This, too, is personal interest but is far inferior as an efficient productive incentive.

     Of all these types of Statism, socialism may perhaps be described as one that avoids expressed and explicit dependence on compulsion. But this is a difference only in appearance. It must fall back on State compulsion in actual practice. Other wise, it fails to be a school of governance. It becomes just semantic jugglery by creating a confusion between goal and means. Social justice and general welfare are aims, not means, and they are also the aims of a free economy.

     To throw away the natural check on error and wrong-doing, namely, competition, and to rely on the integrity, diligence, and loyalty of officials controlled by some minority group, acting in the name of the people, is to, abandon the sure way and taking a very doubtful path. The path of State regulation has been amply demonstrated to be a failure. There is no guarantee, to put it most mildly, that the objective will be attained. On the other hand, the losses involved are certain, the greatest among them being the loss of individual freedom with all its far-reaching consequences in the material as well as spiritual field.

     Minimum government and maximum freedom for the individual, decentralized responsibility instead of centralized planning and concentration of authority, and a moral revolution instead of legislative compulsion, the inner law taking the place of the external policeman, leading to the gradual transformation of personal ownership into trusteeship for the community, without detriment to the fundamental principle, the dynamics of wealth, namely, the personal interest of the man who works and sacrifices and risks what he has lawfully earned and acquired, in order to obtain an increase of wealth- this is the Gandhian pattern of economic and political life which is reiterated by the Swatantra Party and for which it has raised the standard of revolt against the Statism of the Congress Party. Individual power is a cow. It is not to be cut up and made into beef; it should be kept alive and fed. It will give abundant milk, the milk of national prosperity, and multiply itself even as a cow does.