Swarajya, June 4, 1966
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.
Some control is necessary. Some government is necessary. But it does not follow that everything must be controlled or that democracy must be replaced by the Servile State.
Our conviction and our plea to the electorate is that relief can come to the poor only through national prosperity, and that national prosperity can come only through freedom of trade and industry.
When I started the Swatantra Party I had not calculated my physical handicaps. i thought the justification would attract strength and the call on me would not be heavy, and that the fire would catch and feed itself.
Jawaharlal Nehru thought that it was a gang-up of vested interests. The programme being one that would benefit private business, he thought that all industrialists and businessmen would join and place their resources at the disposal of the party and it was going to get terribly strong. Experienced administrators, he saw, expressed sympathy with the party’s programme. Experienced men were of course also old. So he called it a “rich man’s party” and “an old man’s party
He did not realize how the Permit-Licence-Quota terror would work and keep the business class away from coming to the party in any such big strength. He did not anticipate that each individual businessman would look after himself though he knew what was happening to business and industry as a whole.
Nehru himself did not anticipate how his socialism would quickly become a totalitarian tyranny. One-party rule came into being and corrupt careerists ganged up under that aegis and held all business and businessmen to ransom.
When the ruling party seized control over the economy of Everyman, it became the enemy of the people. A regime that robs people of fundamental freedoms is Worse than that of a foreign ruler who contents himself with minimum government but leaves untouched freedom of trade and business.
Non-cooperation with the Congress Party alone can bring freedom back.
The fear that the ruling party, if returned to power again, may take vindictive action against those who refits to help the Congress with funds or help the Swatantra Party should be shed. Large-scale non-cooperation of that type cannot attract vindictive action on the part of Government. The ruling party dare not resort to such disgraceful victimization. There is after all a press and some kind of public opinion which the ruling party has to face even in the Servile State.
