Lessons in the Hard Way

Economic planning has acquired a hold over the educated Indian mind and the literate population of the country of a kind that is to be found perhaps nowhere else in the free world. Indians are in fact prepared to assign to the new theories of growth a certitude which many other people find difficult to accord.

- The National and Grindlays Review

Not by repeated arguments, but only by painful experience do men see light. Arguments are met by arguments. Prejudices and obstinacy are not shattered but get hardened by the hammer strokes of reason.

     We have seen this in the case of the language problem in multilingual India. But recent painful events have made a silent change in the convictions of many important leaders. The case of the Prime Minister is different, for he had, I believe, always doubted the wisdom of replacing English by Hindi. He now has ample evidence to confirm his misgivings. A silent shift has occurred in the linguistic policy. I do not wish to repeat old arguments which may take the unpleasant colour of 'I told you so' which may not help but may hinder the course of the new sanity.

     The executive of the Indian Medical Council has suggested to the Gujarat University that English should continue as the medium of instruction for medical courses. The university had called for the opinion of the Council on its plan to switch over from English to Gujarati as the medium of instruction, at university level, for all departments including the Medical Faculty. In a letter to the university authorities the Council is reported to have stated that 63 out of the 67 organizations and authorities whom the Council had approached had strongly recommended English as the medium of medical education.

     As the foreign house of Hanover has admirably suited the British Throne, let this 'foreign' language, which has served India these ten decades so well,, continue to serve the administration, and preserve the unity of this large country. Let the maximum mobility be enjoyed by the elite of the nation by the continuance of English. Mobility more than all other things helps to unite us into one nation. English gives mobility to the elite of all the regions and keeps away the evil spirits of suspicion and jealousy. These evil spirits will be encouraged by the displacement of English by any particular Indian language.

     Political leaders of local areas should realize that the measure of their own non-acquaintance with English should not be a negative force to mislead them. Their political power does not lie in the administration. It lies and should lie in the legislatures where the language of debate and exposition will be the local language. Education and administration should aim at all-India unity, all-India mobility, efficiency, impartiality and avoidance of unfairness, and even the appearance of it. Let us look upon the language medium in the same way as we look upon other means of communication, the railway, the telegraph and the like as a handy servant and not be needlessly afraid of it.

     Again, in regard to the agricultural and food problems of the country, facts revealed in surveys and embodied in official reports, have brought about a clarification more effectively than any arguments and debates. After surveying the statistics of the performances of co-operative societies, the Governor of the Reserve Bank has given his unmistakable impressions. The Hindu, reviewing, all this, pungently wrote the other day : "Every other type of society (calculated to improve the out-turn of agriculture) which involved some form or other of pooling of land for purposes of cultivation seemed to work more often at a loss than at a profit. It is up to the Government to find out why this is so". Why this is so is obvious enough; lack of interest which nature attaches only to ownership.

     Here are the results of one year's working, the last under review. Two-hundred- and-fifty-one joint farming societies broke, 622 societies showed a loss amounting to Rs.13 lakhs.

     Two-hundred-and-eighty-five collective farming societies worked at a loss of nearly Rs. 7 lakhs and 221 societies showed no profit. One lakh and two thousand acres were placed under 893 collectives. Not only was there no profit but there was loss of Rs. 2 1/2 lakhs. Ignoring the losing societies, those that produced profit yielded three and half rupees per acre put under collectives !

     Of the tenant farming societies, which also were experiments in the pooling of lands, 890 ran at a loss totalling nearly Rs. 4 lakhs.

     These facts prove the futility of any form of collectivism, either compulsory or induced by various temptations. These latest figures of the Reserve Bank at least must convince, where arguments have failed. India cannot afford to depend on 8tate- directed compulsory labour, abandoning the magic of property and the incentive of individual interest. If slavery is execrated, it is because Tabour is compulsorily extracted for the benefit not of oneself but for another person or organization.

     The dictatorship of the proletariat is a fraud, wrote Lord Mordson of Lambeth recently in introducing a revealing secret document of the communists. It is the dictatorship of the communist secretariat, he said, and not of the proletariat. So is the socialism of the Indian National Congress a combination of ignorance and fraud. The dictatorship of the party high command goes by the deceptive name of socialism.

     The poor must be lifted to a better life. There is no doubt about this and everyone agrees that this should be our great aim and preoccupation. But the Congress Party is going the wrong way to achieve this, by using the powers of the State to mop up all savings and resources and increasing the field of State-management. What should be done is to do everything to increase private prosperity and expand the opportunities of the poor for employment. It is only in the enlargement of the field for employment spread country-wide that the welfare of the poor lies.

     It is an insane and impossible plan to seek to give land to everyone and adopt an expropriatory drive to appear to be wanting to do this. It is dishonest to ask for votes on this basis. It is equally unintelligent to rely on collectivization in any form to improve the lot of either small peasants or landless workers, or to increase production.

     The first thing to be clearly realized is that the increase of national wealth depends on the expansion of individual enterprise and energy. Every inducement, incentive and encouragement should be given to this end. Instead, everything done by the Congress tends to discourage individual effort by its twin policies of expanding public management to the maximum and by a system of controls and licences giving monopolies to favoured individuals protecting them absolutely against competition. The latter is given the name of the private sector and people are made to believe that everything is done for helping individual enterprise through a mixed economy. A poisonous mixture of private monopolies and growing Statism is what now the Congress Party stands for. There is a go slow policy followed now in view of the general elections. But when they are over, the Congress policy will be naked Statism. The Swatantra Party stands for prosperity through a free economy, with no favours but fair competition and a rapidly enlarging field for employment in all the productive and distributing activities of the nation, industrial, agricultural and commercial.