The
below article is an ambitious attempt to juxtapose the histories of two
different political parties both of which originated in different eras. Both
were started with lofty ambitions and both of them failed to recognize that
they were too ill-equipped for their respective missions. Above all,there is
something else that brings them together- they face the same enemy.
THE CONGRESS –ALL IN ONE
By
the end of the 19th century, almost a century into India being
colonized by the British, the adverse impacts were beginning to be felt
throughout the country. The Great Imperial British engine was operating at full
efficiency at that time.The Indian mercantile class had no answer to the
sophisticated machinery of the capital intensive British industry which set the
tone for predatory pricing of its consumer goods in the Indian market through
large scale production at low input costs. The Indian peasantry on the other
side, was smothered by heaps of multilayered taxation with each layer consumed
by a corresponding level in the British administrative hierarchy. In short, the
pestilence of colonial exploitation spared neither the rich nor the poor
wreaking universal havoc throughout the subcontinent.
This
necessitated the creation of a representative entity that would transcend the
boundaries of class, religion and geography and would speak up to the imperial
British Government in a single voice, the concerns of its hapless, heterogeneous
subjects.
The
Indian National Congress was formed hence , that was led by a team of illustrious
leaders in Surendranath Banerjee, Lala Lajpat Rai, Dadabhai Naoroji etc. The
INC grew gradually into a massive nationwide movement when the reins were
handed over to Mahatma Gandhi and Pt.Jawaharlal Nehru. The success of the INC
in luring even the uninterested common man into the stream of political
movement lay not only in the effectiveness of Gandhi’s Satyagraha or the
crusade for social equality that he initiated in parallel. The Congress
movement based its struggle on an indisputable critique of colonialism and
imperialism, meticulously evolved after intensive analysis into the roots of
sufferings of all the social classes in India post the advent of the Europeans.
This was the strongest point of the Congress movement which succeeded in
convincing every Indian citizen that his suffering was a result of the anti
people policies pursued by the imperial British government.
The
Congress had solidified into more a mass movement than a party and, inspite of
the reversals the British faced in the Second World War, and the emergence of other
international developments that undermined its hold on its territories, the
contribution of the Congress in liberating India should never be
underestimated.
Post-liberation
, the Congress , under the leadership of Nehru, was happy to offload the
responsibilities it had assumed as a movement and to restrict itself to the
role of a mere political party. Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime
Minister of India. He who had so far succeeded in emancipating Indians from British
slavery, now had to emancipate them from poverty.
Nehru
believed in socialism and could only speak more socialism than he could
practice. The Government was setting up ration shops on one side but its
ministers were doing clandestine favours for the Indian big business. The
Government ignored primary education completely. India was faring poorly in
healthcare while the Government was setting up industries for mining and heavy
engineering. The Government, however, had succeeded in kick-starting the dead
engines of the Indian economy and India, to some extent did show signs of growth.
But the fruits of India’s development, just like today were not getting
distributed equally.
Whatever
could have been the failings of the Congress, the following facts need to be
acknowledged. The Congress was solely responsible for the mobilization of all
the separate, dissimilar nation-states of the Indian sub-continent into an
integrated Indian Union. Many of the colonized
countries of the world, post liberation had regressed into autocracies due to
internal strife but Nehru’s Congress managed to keep India together as a cohesive,
democratic Republic with secularism as its distinguishing ideal.
Post
the death of Nehru, the Congress unfortunately, rudderless in the dangerous
seas of uncertain times, began the process of recruiting self-centered
sycophants to the Nehru family. The same party which had been established by
intellectuals and patriots committed to the goal of freedom and which was seen
by foreign countries as the most progressive Indian organization brandishing
the idea of a secular, democratic, non-aligned India to the world , was
beginning its downward spiral to a near moribundity to which it was to reach a
few decades later.
The
preponderance of an intellectually malnourished, power-addicted class of
politicians at the core of the party organization deprived even the faintest
hopes of the party regaining its old-time values. The only objective of the
Congress became securing the votes of all the sections of the people even at
the cost of sacrificing its Gandhi and Nehru at the altar of the ballot. The
Congress rubbished the principles of democracy when it declared the Emergency
and trampled upon secularism when it sponsored the massacre against Sikhs in
1984. Towards the end of the millennium, the Congress opted to align itself
strongly in favour of the U.S placing India at the mercy of the global economy.
In other words, Europe and the U.S wanted India to be opened for their entry
and the same Congress which had shut Europe out of India, a few decades back had
decided to atone for its past sin.
THE FAST DECLINE
India
was liberalized in 1991 by the Congress Government and twenty years into it,
India had exemplified what Joseph Stiglitz, the former Chief Economist of the
World Bank, had to theorise about the current state of liberalized countries
under the clutches of international finance institutions.
He
points out that, the prescriptions of neo-liberalism , that were administered
to the ailing Third World Countries, brought about radical changes in their
political, cultural and social facets. The changes were, no doubt extremely
regressive and pernicious in the long run for the country’s economy. One such
change was the sudden pervasiveness of corruption throughout the client country
and India, as though proving his point, was beginning to record unforeseen
levels of corruption post-liberalization. Stiglitz in his book, names a lot of directives
that the client countries had to follow if they were to receive loans from the IMF and
the World Bank , some of which are listed below.
- Privatize the assets of the government especially any
undertaking of the public sector irrespective of its performance.
- Remove all internal restrictions for the local or the
international business community that might hamper the ease of doing business.
- Make credit facilities easily available with less borrowing
restrictions to the business community at the cost of limiting loans to the
less lucrative sectors such as agriculture
The
Congress faithfully adhered to all these directives which led to the following
consequences.
The
first directive to sell all the public assets in every country resulted in the
heads of the respective ministries indulging in surreptitious deals with big
businesses that promised shares of the public assets at throwaway prices in return
for hefty bribes. The previous NDA government was alleged to have indulged in
such questionable practices in selling the shares of SAIL , NTPC,etc. As time
progressed, the same frivolous practices extended to the sale of the nation's
natural resources which resulted in the recent 2G, coal block allocation scams
that were touted to be the biggest public scandals ever committed on earth.
The
second directive to facilitate the business sector to start and run new
business resulted plenty of secret land allocation deals between the heads of
the administration and the corporate heads that sold land for pittances to the
exchequer. There are plenty of such irregularities remaining unresolved at
courts of law raised by the CAG, some of which happened at Gujarat in relation
to the Adani company and at Karnataka with regard to software multinationals.
The
third directive to provide credit facilities to the corporate sector with
relaxation of plenty of lending restrictions resulted in unprecedented amounts
of NPA to the public sector banks. The banks, went way beyond the new
relaxations and were happy to ignore even the credit worthiness of the customer
to offer heavy loans, even if he had an obvious record of loan default with
other banks. It goes without saying that the bank officials indubitably were
complicit in such transactions. The recent case of the owner of the United
Breweries defaulting on a huge loan is one glaring example of this.
Hence,
India under the Congress, was beginning to write new definitions of corruption.
These allegations of corruption naturally tarnished the image of the UPA
Government and disillusioned the masses which had reposed faith in the
leadership of the the most qualified economist in the country, Dr. Manmohan
Singh. Along with corruption, high inflation owing to frequent hikes of fuel
prices, forward trading practices betrayed the faith of the people who had
given the UPA Government a second term.
People’s
anger peaked against such a non-performing, super-corrupt Congress government
that ultimately led to some sporadic protests by an Anna Hazare, an
ex-serviceman and an active Gandhian. The news starved media was aware of the
fact that such events of public agitation even though were not phenomenal
compared to the euphoric JP movement of the 1970s , was nevertheless
sensational and was ready to devote its time and resources towards capturing
the vigour or exaggerating it whenever needed, for wholesale public consumption.
The media perception soon became the nation’s perception and the Hazare
movement gathered its much needed momentum.
The
movement was titled ‘India Against Corruption’ and eradicating corruption was its
recurrent motif. This attracted the educated youth of the country and even the politically
ignorant masses because it spoke their language and also mainly because, the
torch bearers of the movement were not ready to analyse the origins of
corruption from any historical or theoretical standpoint. On the eve of the
2014 general election the media were successful in dubbing the rise of the
electoral derivative of the movement, the Aam Aadmi Party as a revolution.The
fledgling AAP branded itself as the only incorruptible, transparent political alternative to the trite virtual ‘two party politics’ of the
Congress and the BJP.
What
was surprising of the AAP was its success in drawing even the most principled
and committed socio-political activists into its fold. Medha Patkar, SP
Udayakumar , Gnani Sankaran for whom parliamentary democracy was an obnoxious
idea till then, had suddenly developed an inexplicable faith in its efficacy.
The reception was complete and the media, in no time declared that the AAP had
easily gained the political space occupied by the Left parties in India, The
middle class more than others, firmly believed that the victory of the AAP on a
national level will mark the beginning of a new era in Indian politics.
The
AAP, as everyone might be aware managed to emerge as a single largest party in
the Delhi assembly in 2013.But it soon resigned due to various issues with its
allies and with the Central Government. The AAP lost heavily in the general
elections but managed to claw back its lost ground in 2015 routing the mammoth
BJP in 67 out of 70 seats in Delhi.
The
AAP now seems to have arrived resoundingly and the expectations of its
sympathizers have been revived now. But all we see now, is an ugly internal
conflict within a party between its frontline leaders. The differences seem to
be personal and all I see is that the clash is no different from what we have
been seeing all these years within the DMK or the Congress. It is too early to
pass judgment on the AAP but I don’t see any significant changes the AAP can
really bring about if it follows the present course.
IDEOLOGY ,THE CONGRESS, THE AAP
Any
party, in my opinion, should be formed at the conclusion of an internal
political discourse that shall determine its political leaning. This political
leaning firmed up by a profound understanding of the political economy of the
country in question shall serve as a beacon for the future course of the party
irrespective of whether it is in power or not. In simple words, a party should
either belong to the left or the right. I shall discuss in this space why the
Congress did not assume such a political shade and what would have happened if
it had.
During
the pre-independence days, Nehru and other leaders tried to color the Congress
movement with ‘red’ness but were soon stopped by Gandhi who believed in the
subordination of the class struggle to the political struggle and wanted both
the industrialist and the farmer to fight the British with a single minded
resolve . Also the multi-class representation of the Congress prevented any
such transformation. The Congress was seen as a party that transcended
political ideology whose only objective was to free India from the Europeans.
This move, to a very large extent worked, as India went on to attain
independence, and the objective of the Congress to unify the nation on a
purpose was somehow achieved.
However
post-liberation, once the movement became a party,the Congress, had it anointed
itself as a left wing party, would have prioritized universal healthcare and free
education , expanded the country’s industrial muscle and created a
self-sufficient independent economy. Even during the changed times of the 1990s,
had the Congress practised left-wing politics, it would have stood against the
economic invasion of the U.S and the Europe. Even if liberalization is deemed
inevitable in the present day scenario, the Congress could have followed the
model of China or South Korea, and infused firm state-control into the play of
market forces.
Or
had it chosen otherwise, it could have traversed the model of the United States
and tapped the benefits of free market capitalism to the country’s advantage.
But
the Congress did neither. It welcomed FDI in all sectors and found FDI
anti-people when it was allowed to languish in the opposition. It effectively
weakened the PDS during its rule but at the end of its ten year term, wanted to
push the Food Security Bill forward which is pretty much the revamp of the PDS. The Congress, stalled the process of
recruitment to the Public Sector but implemented a Rural Employment Guarantee
programme effectively.
Now
let us turn to the AAP and put forth some questions.
Did
the AAP, the real-time incarnation of the cinema vigilante heroes, take note
of the fact that the growth of the beast of corruption has overtaken the growth
of India’s GDP, only post liberalization? Did the AAP want to recognize the
fact that unbridled freedom to market forces shall foster corruption alone and
not growth? Does the AAP have any alternative action plan that can obliterate
the roots of corruption rather than cutting its overgrowth as and when
possible?
THE IMPORTANCE OF IDEOLOGY –THE
WAY FORWARD
There
might be a few questions that might arise in the mind of the reader who has
come thus far and I am bound to clarify them as much as I can. Why should a
party stick to an ideology and confine itself to it?? Why should a party always
subscribe either to the right or the left? Why cannot a party be run by the
sole virtue of honesty?
To
answer the first question, one must recognize that ideology should not be seen
merely as a limiting factor that tunnels your vision and tethers you to a
single sticky standpoint. Ideology offers you a prism through which you
interpret political phenomenon. What it gives you need not be always the
reality but its usefulness in offering insights about a political development
should not be discounted. It is the onus of the observer to analyze a
development based on contradicting ideologies, compile the observations
obtained from each examination and arrive at a conclusion which is convincing
to oneself whose inherent subjectivity shall not be denied at any cost.
To
answer the second question as to why should a party always choose the left or the
right, I shall have to build more on the contention that I have rolled out now.
The ideology which I have been talking so much about cannot be in any
circumstance, a purely political one, completely divorced from economics.
To reiterate, politics cannot exist without economics. No war in the history of
the world has been fought without the intention to acquire more wealth. No king
acquired territories merely for earning the prestige of owning one. Even
the prestige of owning a piece of land stems from the material benefit it might
bring to its owner. Since it is economics that fuels politics, it is
indispensable for any honest, discerning politician to learn what both the
divergent schools of economics written by Adam smith and Karl Marx had to say.
Answering
the third question becomes easy for me now as you may see that the principles
of honesty and uprightness can only guide you to walk through a chosen path but
does not validate the legitimacy of the choice.
You
can also contend that a party can draw a line between the left and the right
and conflate the merits of both the right and left ideologies to form a new
effective product. History has so many precedents as to explain why a centrist
party shall always end up falling on the right side.
Yet,
if the new enlightened AAP can manage to evolve such a new centrist ideology
and toe that line, I will be glad to welcome it. But the stand of the AAP that
it is beyond the fetters of ideology and the pride that it draws from such a
proclamation, unintentionally bares its vacuous intellect. As I used to tell my
friends often, before you think you are breaking a rule, you must know the
origin of the rule and the significance of its existence.
So
why did I have to include the two supposedly antagonistic parties of Congress
and the AAP in this discussion? The Congress, during the time of its inception targeted
British colonialism only because it rightly diagnosed it as the cause for mass
poverty in India . It succeeded in slaying it through sustained, committed
political struggle. But it was only a half-victory because it could manage only
to eradicate colonialism and that the party’s ideological emptiness did not
allow it to look any further. The Congress could not recognize that colonialism
was nothing but a more ruthless form of capitalism. Would the East India
Company invade a country that has no natural resources or any country that is
not ready to serve as a cheap labour market? Was not the EIC and other imperial
countries driven by the interests of their own big businessmen and, was not
imperialism, the crude form of what they now call the neo-liberalism? May be
some of the Congress leaders had seen what they should have, but had remained
mute, since Congress was not a principled left-wing party to shift its focus to
nailing capitalism down after its first goal was achieved. Now as we see, the
Congress possibly breathing its last days paying for its ideological vacuity.
Now since the AAP has proved electorally that it can fight the BJP, all that is
expected from them is immediate ceasefire of the ongoing internal feud and engage
in a sincere attempt to study the dynamics of the struggle that it promised to
wage to the people. Just like how India had to fight the tentacles of
capitalism originating from the West a few centuries ago, it now stares at what
looks like a repetition of history. The challenge for the AAP, if it really is
true to its cause, thankfully is not two-layered as the Congress was destined to
face. It does not need to fight colonialism first to get to its older brother.
There is only one fight, only if it decides to indulge in grappling with ideas
rather than grappling with its own men.
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