New Opportunities For All

Five years ago, in August 1959, I had the privilege of inaugurating a Convention of the Swatantra Party in Bombay. When I addressed the gathering, I said that we were inaugurating not merely a new party but a movement of freedom. It was a true statement based on a correct analysis of the situation. It holds good even now. We are conducting a great movement of freedom and not just building up a political party, to oppose or finally merge with the ruling party.

Forty-five years ago, when I was not very young but was forty years old, and I had done twenty years of active practice at the bar and twelve years of equally active political life as a congressman and Home Ruler, I joined the non-co­operation movement in close collaboration with and under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, with no intention of achieving fame or expectation of any prospect of acquiring power through politics.

Now when I am twice that age, I am engaged in a revolt against what I have come to see is a fatally wrong direction taken by the Congress Party in the governance of this great country. I came to the conclusion five years ago— and I hold it was a correct conclusion—that a movement for real freedom, as important and as serious as the movement for independence from British rule, had to be vigorously conducted against this misconceived progress towards what will end in the suppression of individual liberty and the development of the State into a true Leviathan. I said in 1959, and it is even truer now than then, that the State is becoming a giant entity by itself with a pernicious egotism menacingly poised against the citizens, interfering with their lives at all points, mistrusting the producers and the traders, with no faith in the commonsense of the people, imposing restrictions and controls and regulations, trespassing in all the fields of national production and the distribution mechanism that has grown with civilization, creating a vast army of expensive officials, tremendously increasing the cost of administration and the accompanying drain of funds, and thereby forced to levy oppressive taxes, hypnotizing the people with slogans that are mistaken for experience and wisdom.

It is a scheme of government in which it is taken for granted that the citizens are ignorant of what is good for themselves. Beginning with a false conception and making promises which are necessarily incapable of performance, the Government is pressed by its sympathetic critics to try more and more regulations and controls. The whole business, faulty at the base as well as in the superstructure, leads to the people becoming victims of one deception after another.

The octopus-hold which the ruling party has secured on men and their lives and occupations in the name of ‘socialism’, enables it to prevent any organization growing up in opposition to it. The then Attorney-General made a speech in Bombay about the time our party was founded, in which he made a scathing indictment against what the Government was doing and found fault with the public and the professions for their indifference and silence. But what can indictments do when power in the ruling party’s hands is effectively misused? The situation is now the same as then, perhaps in some respects worse. Use and prescription strengthen evil as well as good. Officials first lost courage to stand up to political pressure. Now they take political pressure to be the normal procedure of the Constitution. Justice has fled from the administration, making room for politics.

The silver lining in the cloud now is that after the demise of Sri Jawaharlal Nehru, while we have lost a man of power who was relatively open to conviction and have now to face men of less, much less, power who are afraid to change inherited policies, we have a government composed of men who have no demi-god aura but greatly depend on public approval. Democracy has therefore a new chance. Reasoned opposition has now a fair likelihood of making headway, provided the people give adequate support to such opposition. This opens out a good field of hope, provided energy and the spirit of upright perseverance do not fail us. The nation is still in a state of grief over the late Prime Minister’s sudden demise. But let us overcome that emotion and realize that Providence never inflicts loss or pain without compensating for it with some new opportunities. It is for those who disapproved, and still disapprove, of the ruling party’s policies to use the new opportunities with courage, integrity and energy, and with hope of success. Apart from the question of replacement of the Government, we have now a Prime Minister who cannot brush aside advice and criticism but who, unless I am sadly mistaken, will be led by reason and shaped by criticism. If we in the Opposition are not careerists but honest statesmen, we should be content with that for the present.

We cannot be sure what shape the Government’s plans of buying and selling food grains will ultimately take. Much depends on the general lines of action the Centre decides upon. But much also depends on how the State Chief Ministers and Congress bosses view them and decide on doing. So far as the Centre’s general principle and lines of operation go, they appear to be satisfactory. The Central Food Minister wishes the Government Corporation to be just a competitor in the market and an honest rival to the private dealers. This is just what the Swatantra Party has always been pleading for in all fields. It may not pay taxes as the private dealers have to. Its officials need not work under a constant sense of being looked upon as potential criminals, as the private dealers have unfortunately been treated for some years past. Otherwise, as far as a new policy can mend matters, the Food Minister has decided on a commendable policy of fair and equal competition with private enterprise. But very much depends on how the State Congress ministers and their organizational advisers will behave. If they proceed, as is their wont, to look upon the new organization as one more party auxiliary for feathering the party-nests against the next general elections, the machinery will not be either popular or truly efficient. If this is effectively guarded against, the principle of competition will work much good for the consumers, and the public would welcome the new arrangement.

The retail trade, too, should be run on the principle of fair competition with private retail traders. If government monopoly is introduced there or if ‘discipline’ turns out to be unfair, harsh and self-defeating, the whole plan will be a failure. Indeed it is in the retail distribution that the important safeguard of fair and equal competition is essential. It is hoped the new Central Food Minister will not yield to any pressures, but proceed according to his honest notions and put the bureaucracy to the severe test that fair competition provides. The Government Corporation’s fair price retail shops should stand the competition in the quality of the stuff sold, as well as in the important field of courtesy and prompt service. The Food Minister should recruit his men in a new and original way from among those who have had experience in the line and not organize just another bunch of upper and lower division clerks. There are plenty of experienced retail trade hands willing and ready to serve a government corporation, who will be honest if properly inspired. Here is a big and noble adventure, worthy of the ambition of a new Food Minister who, so to say, has accepted a big challenge from his colleague

The Opposition has no objection to any plans of Government to enter trade or production in any field. It is only the ministerial benches that must object on one ostensible ground or another and prevent further evidence accumulating against their creed of nationalization and what would further damage whatever reputation the Government has for managing other people’s affairs better than they themselves do. Of course if these experiments mean any kind of pernicious monopoly or a considerable loss of public funds, every one will have to object. Within limits, however, the Opposition should allow these attempts which would more speedily than by mere argument, convince the public about the deadly dangers of State capitalism.