The Congress Manifesto

After fifteen years of total economic, political and spiritual power over the people of India, unparalleled in the history of this country, the Congress Party has issued its apologies, and put forward promises in a sixty-six hundred word document asking for a further lease of power. The daily papers have not grudged the space and published it at full length.

     Those who can read not only what is printed but also between the lines can see how greatly the Congress Party has unwillingly been affected by the emergence of the Swatantra Party. It has reconciled itself to a restrained and apologetic tone. The document would have been quite a different one had the Swatantra Party not been born. The birth and activities of the Swatantra Party have been fully justified.

     We are told that the policy of the Congress Party is to "offer equal opportunity to every citizen". These words are a mockery in the light of what is going on. Everyone who knows and has suffered by reason of the permit-licence-quota-raj knows how instead of equal opportunity to every citizen, the ruling party has revelled in creating unequal opportunities. The main objection of the Swatantra Party to the Congress is this - that the policies of the Congress Party do not give equal opportunity to every citizen, but furnish means to favoured individuals to get rich, and get rich easily and quickly.

     It is claimed that the aim of the Congress Party is to build up a 'self-sustaining and self-generating economy". These words, too, are a mockery even like the claim just before dealt with. Borrowing as the Congress Government has been doing on a monstrous scale from all the governments of the world, severally as well as jointly, and proposing to go on doing it, there is no sense in the party talking about a self-sustaining economy. Taking advantage of the political situation generated by the cold War, the ruling party has indulged in gigantic borrowing, and reduced India to the position of a hopeless debtor, as the Governor of the Reserve Bank all but confessed recently in America. With this staring in the face, how can the ruling party talk of a self-sustaining and a self-generating economy? There can be no independence when we enter into debts about which not even a plausible scheme of repayment has been announced. Apart from repayment, even maintaining appearances by regular payment of interest will soon become difficult, it not impossible. The limitations of our resources, the demands both for defence and maintenance of decent civil life, and the feeble export potentialities of the country, especially in the matter of exports to the highly industrialized nations from whom the borrowing is being done, make it impossible to make both ends meet except by an unthinkable degree of oppressive taxation and inflation.

     The whole scheme of this "self-sustaining and self-generating economy rests on the double presumption of (1) the unabated continuance of the cold war in order that the motives for foreign aid may be kept up and (2) the avoidance by the Powers of an outburst of hostilities. If war breaks out, this "self-generating and self-sustaining" scheme which depends on continued and promptly delivered external assistance will go into smoke. At the same time our dependence on the cold war prevents us from offering anything better than hypocritical prayers to the gods that international hatred and suspicion, and the consequent armaments race, may come to a stop. When all is said and done, it is this hatred and suspicion that enables us to get the assistance we are getting, in spite of the opposition of powerful sections in America, Germany and elsewhere.

     The Congress Party's manifesto says the party stands for a new social order that "preserves the worth and dignity of the individual". Nothing can beat the falsehood of this claim. Apart from what the socialist pattern means-which is the opposite of the freedom or the worth or the dignity of the individual- the experience of tens of thousands of honest men in India under the Congress regime is that the worth and dignity of the individual have been cruelly sacrificed at the altar of the authority of ministers and officials of the State and the unsalaried go betweens (a new tribe which has come into being). Never was there such widespread corruption as now prevails and never were industrious, honest citizens compelled to dance attendance and bow before officials, petty as well as big, as now they do.

     There is reference in the manifesto to the need for preventing the growth of monopolies and the concentration of economic power, a mere cliché without present relevance. It is a tragic fact, on the other hand, that it is the policies of the Congress Party that have brought into being various forms of these very evils. Unearned monopolies are being created by favouritism instead of by the power of capital or by success in competition. The concentration of all economic power in the State has resulted, and will continue to result in increasing measure, in the massing of all power in the hands of officials, and official and semi-official organizations functioning as agencies of the State- ultimately taking inevitable shape in the tyranny of certain individuals, worse than the tyranny of any feudalist system of the old days. The concentration of power in the State and its agencies is bound to kill the soul of the citizen and, with it, dry up his energy and the sources of true happiness.

     We are told that the Congress Party will equalize urban incomes through taxation. The argument is that the Congress regime does not indulge in oppressive taxation for the sake of the money but only because the government aims at removing disparities! All taxation, wherever it is imposed, presses down as an increase of the burden to be borne by the consumers at the lowest level. It does not remove disparities. It increases it, as we have already experienced.

     As for inflation and soaring prices, there is nothing in the manifesto to instill confidence. On the contrary, there is ample notice of a greater measure of these evils being in store for the people if we return this party to power again.

     There are unambiguous hints about restrictions on consumption and limitations on income. Consciously or unconsciously, the ruling party is preparing the country for full-blooded communism. It is not merely a coincidence that the Soviet space pilot Gagarin comes to India now. His visit is an omen.

     As an important daily has remarked, “there will be no tendency to take the Congress manifesto too seriously or much less to be disillusioned by it". If the Congress is to be supported, not because it is approved, but because it is thought that there is no other party which has proved strong enough to replace it, democracy in India will have indeed no future. A beginning has to be made and the fortress has to be breached. Otherwise, entrenched in the deep trenches of a welfare economy, the ruling party can and will continue in power until we have naked communism. To surrender to the Congress because it has entrenched itself in authority, and can overwhelm all opposition by money secured through that power, would be 'treason to the future', to use the words of Dag Harnmarskjoeld. Tasks may appear difficult or even hopeless, but loyalty to the future demands that the Congress must be opposed. The last scene in one of Tennyson's Idylls of the King-Gareth and Lynette - where the monster whom Gareth had to fight looked terrible and unconquerable, but who, when exposed and the maya was broken, proved to be anything but terrible and was vanquished, must inspire us with courage. Satyam must win provided those who carry the banner remain brave.