Swarajya, October 2, 1965
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.
India’s objective in industrializing the country should not be to compete in glory with the developed countries of the West, but to increase the scope for gainful occupation so as to reduce unemployment among the people. The cause of our poverty is that the vast mass of the nation lives only on agriculture. The pressure on land must be reduced by the gradual installation and expansion of such industries as can absorb the labour of the people who at present find their only scope for work in agriculture. If this principle, which ought to guide our industrialization programme, were properly and fully appreciated and adopted, wrong policies would drop out and the nation’s resources would he properly utilized.
We should realize that the world scene has changed entirely. We are not competitors but partners with the developed nations, It is the failure to appreciate this that has led to wasteful misuse of resources in seeking to manufacture what is produced efficiently and cheaply elsewhere, as if we were a besieged and beleaguered nation which must depend on its own production. This misuse of resources, leads to excessive movement of population to urban areas, food shortages, and frustration of all kinds.
We want industrialization, but of what kind is the question. We have been going on wrong lines because of overlooking basic realities and running after wiIl-o’the-wisps. And error at the bottom leads to a bigger and bigger divergence from the right direction as schemes are projected forward, multiplied and expanded, even as the gap widens when diverging straight lines are produced in geometry.
The Governments of developed and aiding nations are not advising us aright. They cannot do it. They apprehend that they would be misunderstood if they did so. It is obvious that we should depend on our own judgment. We should reflect on the matter and guide ourselves aright. We cannot expect Western industrial nations to tell us not to compete with them, even if that happens to be the right and wise course for us in their opinion.
Industry and industrialization, in this exposition, would include all types of work involving bodily exertion other than land cultivation. It would include, for instance, the most important work of making roads so as to open up the entire country for easy wheeled traffic. It would include a vast house building programme, which could develop into a gigantic welfare scheme for the entire rural classes. It would include big rural schemes for providing pure drinking water and sanitary conveniences and drainage, and hygienic conditions in the villages which are in these respects now in a notoriously scandalous condition. These and other such big scale works would absorb surplus labour, providing almost unlimited scope for employment, and if efficiently carried out would wholly transform the face of the land, making for rural welfare and general progress at the same time. What the State needs to import from abroad must of course be imported. But if for lack of sufficient foreign exchange private individuals are unable to import luxuries and semi-luxuries, there is no harm whatsoever. The disparity of conditions among different classes of people in our country, which hurts our conscience, would be reduced by such privation.
The plea for earning foreign exchange through advanced type installations is not valid. It is unlikely that we shall be able to earn any sizable foreign exchange by competing with the industrial production of advanced countries and investing our thin resources in such production.
Sri Lobo Prabhu has been, to put it figuratively, crying himself hoarse over these important countrywide plans which should have been taken up, pointing out how the huge sums of money invested in heavy industry factories, giving employment to a relatively very small number of workers, could have been well utilized for the permanent improvement of the condition of our rural areas and for placing the country as a whole at a truly higher level of civilization, while giving employment on a vast scale to raise the level of living in rural parts.
The difference between planning as now practised and planning as it ought to be done is not only in the one being ‘democratic’ and the other ‘totalitarian’, but in what should be given precedence over what is planned to make a quick show and in wanton disregard of the real needs of the people.
The root of the mischief is in the conception that progress lies in competing with advanced countries instead of realizing the oneness of the world, and doing what our country immediately needs and which we should ourselves do, leaving the nations who by reason of accidents of history and advantages have gone in their own way, to supplement our efforts to the extent and in the manner that they can supplement. If others make watches or motor cars small or big we need not imagine that we too should make them, to display our talents. If other people are able to make them at low cost, and if we want them, let us buy these from them, and not seek to make them ourselves before we meet our elementary wants through our own exertion utilizing our rich man-power to the full.
