Swarajya, April 1, 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.
The peasant farmers, not only the poor ones among them but even those who are better off, need credit by way of quick and easy loans and such as should not be associated with a contemporaneous feeling that it is likely to be written off rather than being duly discharged. Agricultural capital is essential. The need for it cannot be got rid of by expropriation of the larger holdings and free gifts of fractions of the land among the poorest, in return for their votes.
The need for supplying easy credit is rightly recognized but it is not recognized that it should be supplied on a non-political basis. It is not recognized that by spreading class conflict and ill will in the rural area, the position has been worsened by what the Congress has done. No one is inclined to confess his own fault. But what is worse is that, having aggravated the situation, the Congress Party proposes to get hold of public money obtained by the Central Government through taxes and what not, and to distribute the money among poor peasants giving the doles the appearance of gifts from the party. The agency for the distribution and its discretionary powers will all help in thickly painting the process as favours and benefits from the great Congress Party which they should support at the election and return to power for another lustrum. In return, the borrowers will indirectly be made to feel that these are not really loans but amounts that will be written off upon due performance on the part of the voters. The whole process is calculated immorality and will debase the public sense of civic rectitude.
All this money-the Chief Minister of Madras said he would get Rs. 50 crores for this purpose for Tamil Nad from the Plan pool-has been got from the tax- payers or obtained on mortgage of the nation's future and deficit financing, kicking up the price spiral.
The jugglery only helps inflation in every way. These amounts are to go to the voters as if they were boons of the Congress Party.
We know, from what the Prime Minister once sadly observed, what happens to these moneys sunk by the Centre on agriculture The new doles hastily distributed to poor peasant voters will not meet with better fortune or yield better results than what the P.M. deplored on a memorable occasion. The natural source of credit and co-operation is in the countryside, in the bigger landholders living in the rural area who, alas, have been almost irretrievably alienated from their poorer brothers and ruined beyond remedy, materially and spiritually, and disabled from fulfilling their proper functions in the country's rural economy, all as a result of Congress policy.
Let the peasants know that the moneys that are going to be doled out to them are from national assets and tax money and are not party men's or ministers' generosity. They may vote for a better government, notwithstanding these doles being received The plan of seizing fifty crores from Plan money, and doling the amount among poor peasants on the eve of the elections, is a patent mechanism for vote-buying. If this is not to be the case let the bonafides be established by the constitution of non-party agencies above suspicion for the distribution of the money and let the procedure be such as to avoid the implications; above deplored.
