Swarajya, November 26, 1960
If we desire that India should occupy a place of importance, and command real respect in the world, it should be made into a prosperous country. Prosperity will come only through successful initiative, enterprise and good management. And this can be secured only if private industries are more widely and effectively encouraged. Public sector enterprises erected and run with foreign aid and foreign personnel will only be show-pieces for the concerned foreign Powers and will not contribute much, or at all, to our own status.
The present crippling taxation and the even more annoying nuisance of controls and regulations do not encourage industries. Private initiative is made to gravitate entirely to officialdom, and licences and permits are inured to various forms of corruption.
It may be odd, but it has become a fact that a more difficult campaign has to be waged against a party that flies our freedom flag than what had to be waged against the Union Jack of Britain. Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru’s historical status and popularity is fully exploited by a party that has fattened on the opportunities of office in an administration, whose tentacles have dug themselves deep in the economy of a ‘welfare State’.
Mr. Nehru is temperamentally loath to be such a tool, but he is unable to free himself from the situation.
Foreign aid and loans paint India as a poor relation in the international world, who will be a nuisance in the cold war if not appeased. Far better would it have been, and more decent, if foreign investments had been more freely encouraged and worked into the private industry of the country and made the responsibility of private partnership business instead of State borrowings on a gigantic scale.
If we desire that India should occupy a place of importance and command real respect in the world, it should be made into a prosperous country. Prosperity will come only through successful initiative, enterprise and good management. And this can be secured only if private industries are more widely and effectively encouraged. Public sector enterprises erected and run with foreign aid and foreign personnel will only be show-pieces for the concerned foreign Powers and will not contribute much, or at all, to our own status.
The present crippling taxation and the even more annoying nuisance of controls and regulations do not encourage industries. Private initiative is made to gravitate entirely to officialdom, and licences and permits are inured to various forms of corruption.
Swatantra which insists on minimum government and maximum freedom must win against the ruling party- not merely to give good government to the people. We must win our struggle for freedom for the love of India, to place it well among the nations on the map of the world. It is unfortunate that in a democracy wherein parliamentary rule and fundamental rights of citizens had been specifically guaranteed in the Constitution, we have allowed Statism to seize hold of our economy and of our polity, and we have to initiate a new struggle to restore the fundamental rights which have been corroded into by amendments. We have to save parliamentary forms from becoming the mere tools of the totalitarianism of a particular party. It may be odd, but it has become a fact that a more difficult campaign has to be waged against a party that flies our freedom flag than what had to be waged against the Union Jack of Britain. Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru’s historical status and popularity is fully exploited by a party that has fattened on the opportunities of office in an administration, whose tentacles have dug themselves deep in the economy of a ‘welfare State’.
Mr. Nehru is temperamentally loath to be such a tool but he is unable to free himself from the situation. He publicly appeals for the party to improve in character! But when self- condemnation begins to show itself through schisms, a cry for unity is raised and thereafter a policy of hush-hush is encouraged, and abuses are covered up and the all-powerful Prime Minister even seeks to apologize for his harsh remarks. The latest slogan - as the elections are approaching - is that ‘men of intelligence’ should be selected as party candidates. Indeed there is no lack of intelligence; there is enough of it to enable the party members to derive the utmost advantage from the present licence-and-permit-economy. What is wanted is the real education that makes for character or at least generates the fear of being detected and exposed.
“Never before has it been so easy to expand the money supply; today new currency can be created merely by the operation of the printing presses.” In the old days kings used to debase the metal of coins. But now inflation is much more easily brought about than in the past. Politics provides the motive to the government for availing itself of this easy possibility. In order to show greater expenditure on social services and on ‘development’, for meeting the demand for fuller employment and to cover national security expenditure on an increased scale, deficit financing is resorted to, and the gap is filled in easily by the printing press. The ruling party resorts to deficit financing to buy popularity in order to be returned to power again, and the printing press and loans, internal and external, give the needed supply of money. The consequent inflation reduces the value of all savings and investments, and of deferred payments for services in the way of pensions and payments made by government for discharging its several national debt liabilities. This indirect confiscation may be passed off when it touches the rich people, but it falls heavily on the victims when they belong to the middle and poorer classes. The concealed confiscation in such cases, if made obvious, would be vigorously protested against. But generally the victims do not realize that prices rise on account of government action but attribute it to natural calamity or the greed of traders or accept the argument of an unavoidable law of a ‘developing economy’.
Foreign aid and loans paint India as a poor relation in the international world, who will be a nuisance in the cold war if not appeased. Far better would it have been, and more decent, if foreign investments had been more freely encouraged and worked into the private industry of the country and made the responsibility of private partnership business instead of State borrowings on a gigantic scale. It would not have then appeared as if we were living on charity.
