Swarajya, October 31, 1964
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.
As Aesop's dog took a commanding position in the manger kept the horse out of its food, Government has taken up commanding position in the rice trade, and has savagely driven out the machinery of competitive procurement and distribution by the business community, and is trying to do has not the capacity ever to do: It seeks to cope with a task and make up for the inherent defects of centralized management by simply multiplying its inefficient and employees. We will soon have a war-time supply department to be looked after by the tax-payers—mainly the sales-tax victims. Expenditure will grow, but there will be no lessening of the distress.
The Government monkeyed with land by a grandiose scheme of placing a ceiling on ownership, and taking away land in order to distribute it among the Government’s voters in the name uplift of the poor. Fragmentation has taken the place of prospective mechanization and benami holders have newly being. Benami holders have a knack of also becoming holders and tough litigants. The big farmers would improved production by utilizing modern facilities, fertilizers and mechanization, which would have boosted production. But the fragmentation brought about by our law-makers has put an end to all this.
The favourites of the Government party were saved by means of provisions in favour of non-rice crops. Consequently, much of the land which formerly produced paddy is now under sugarcane cultivation.
Those who supplied grain to the cities and towns have thus gone out of commission and the smaller holders are too shrewd to part with their grain for currency that has depreciated, and are evading sales. Higher prices are offered but not with much success in dealing with unwilling farmers. Illegitimate threats and indirect coercion, and barricades against free private movements by rail or road which are now operating, will soon be succeeded by plain coercion. “No movement out of the district without permits “—this is now the railway decree. Thus, at the source of supply, everything has been done to make a mess and prevent supply to the urban markets.
Imagine a State Government, once noted for common sense, trying to finance government purchase of all the rice wanted in the cities and towns of the Madras State! The business community was finding its own finance. Government put brakes on the orderly flow of finance by banning credit in banks on pledge of stocks. This credit was a regular and proper means of securing a continuous flow of grain from the rice-basin to the urban markets, in the period from one harvest to another. This was blocked in the hope that Government would manage it and prices would go down if the money supply was reduced. The result is a complete mess.
The queues in cities and towns are lengthening beyond the catch-up width of cameras. The poor labourer’s time is being cruelly wasted and his purchasing power reduced.
Then we have this anti-national idea of barring the export of rice and wheat and gram and pulses from one district to another or from one State to another. Neighbourhood is ignored and artificial barriers are sought to be utilized to prevent producers from earning what they have laboured for. State ministers are particularly fond of these tactics as they easily earn local popularity. Can law and order and civilization survive if there is abundance in Tanjore and Tiruchi, while the people in Kerala or Coimbatore are starving? Can Punjab and Andhra and Rajasthan be happy if they manage to keep all their gram to themselves and the people of Madras are under a famine? This is insane food policy, if India is to be one country and not a continent of warring nations. Cheap parochialism instead of being deprecated is sought to be utilized as a means to bring down prices and secure adequate supply for the local urban areas and overcome popular indignation against bad government. What is called for is a fundamental change in Government’s policies; the courage needed for this reversal of policy must come from God, the source of all good and the source of all courage.
