Swarajya, August 12, 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.
While the net profits of the Cement Industry and the Associated Cement Companies were going down year after year, the Government of India was making high profits by State trading in cement, said Mr. N. Dandekar, Managing Director of the A.C.C. in Bombay, at the public inquiry by the Tariff Commission into the question of the revision of cement prices. The Government has harvested a net profit of Rs. 1 3 crores in less than four years.
And the Government has made all this in addition to taxation without contributing in any way to the production of cement. Let us never forget all this profit the S.TC. has made goes into the price the consumer pays for an almost essential element in the construction of even the lower middle class houses. State trading began with the promise of making things easier for the consumers. People's memories are terribly short and rulers of democracy can with impunity commit greater crimes than any Maharaja or Sultan of ancient times could. Even public disapprobation becomes inarticulate, provided money is liberally spent by the party in power at general elections out of funds collected from its 'welfare State' victims.
And so a particular party recruiting itself with power-hungry men, year after year, and generating for itself strength from the strength of the State, will go on reigning for ever. Wise men who love real democracy must say:
It is not wise to be indifferent about a growing fire. It will be beyond control later on. And yet some feed that fire with their own fuel.
