Swarajya, January 6, 1962
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.
The Congress Party, which is throwing overboard the principle of competition in production, management and distribution, seeks to hang all these by the slender thread of public spirit and faith in the leaders of the State and its constitutional powers of compulsion. The party has thus exchanged the one time-tested and reliable motive-force that looks after quality and vigilantly controls economics and the volume of production, for an untested (and, wherever tested, found inadequate) motive that suits patterns in cloudland but not any scheme of real work in a real world.
Having given up the principle of competition in the field of production and service on the bidding of socialism, the Congress under the leadership of Mr. Nehru (make no mistake of thinking he does not know it) acts on the single strategy of setting up a competition for favours from the ruling party.
Favour a few chosen men, and there will be competition among them all for the same and thus you will get a nation-wide rush for the smiles of the ruling party, and permits and quotas and sanctions for issue of fresh capital and so on. You may not be able to please them all (for that is arithmetic) but every one will hope and stand in a queue; and this is all that is wanted to perpetuate your own rule. Every chief minister (and in this, chief ministers are the real operators for the party) knows the value of this strategy; and Mr. Nehru finds it works, and so he, the great Mr. Nehru, Jias become the ‘yes-man’ of this gang of lower level operators. At a certain stage, ambition is reduced, alas, to unconscious and degrading submission to the weapons it employs, and confuses operational success with triumph.
The few favoured have their own parasites and the whole gang thus collected calls itself a political party, and the tricolour flag with the dharma chakra on it is waved on their behalf for adharma and profiteering! Those who stand for freedom and fair competition are the enemies of this crowd of permit and quota holders and favour-seekers. No wonder when among these any impulse of long-sight or patriotism shows itself and seeks to help the Swatantra Party, the rest combine to suppress these unwanted symptoms of courage and wisdom.
Short-sight and immediate favours are forces of relatively high potential and can defeat the efforts of wisdom and self protection, because these have not the heat and urgency of the former. They walk to suicide because some honey is provided on the way. They go licking the honey thinking it will last for ever.
The Swatantra Party is pledged to the guarantee of freedom of occupation and to the protection of property in what is lawfully acquired and held protection of profession and property in general, and not protection of profession and property for a favoured few which is the instrument of Congress power. The Swatantra Party is pledged to what were solemnly guaranteed in the Constitution and will work for the restoration of those guarantees where, by amendments, these have been taken away.
It is a melancholy paradox that the ruling party uses the most sinister form of competition without a pang of conscience, while it gives up the principle of competition where it is truly beneficial to the nation. It stands unabashed for competition in favours, while it thoughtlessly throws away the most precious and the most essential instrument of good and increasing production, viz., honest competition and the judgment of the market. The nation should reject a party that stands for a scheme of favours and vote for the Constitution.
