A canard called “65 wasted years” is the favourite RSS-BJP supporter’s excuse for supporting thugs. But this piece is not about recounting what has been achieved. (That India leaped to 3rd largest economy in the world should be enough, but moving on.) Its about how to effectively address this falsehood.
The discussion usually proceeds somewhat like this:
A Sanghi will cite some statistic regarding development where India is desperately lagging. And then add: In 65 years Nehru-Gandhi family damaged this great country (sone ki chidiya). Shame on you for supporting the Congress and justifying soul crushing poverty that the dynasty has brought upon us.
The only answer that can be given to this sweeping generalisation is that as compared to
Pakistan (since its the country cut from the same wool as us), we have created a very much sane society. Here for most part fundamentalist fringe elements does not control the government and we have a democratically elected government system which we take for granted. For all the dynasty bashing, Nehru/Gandhi did not took over the control of the government. We are talking about a phase of India where everyone including BJP leaders were in awe of Jawaharlal Nehru/Indira gandhi (Remember Vajpayee calling Indira incarnation of Durga goddess). Apart from the relapse during 1975-77, If India is a successful democracy (along with its faults), Congress deserves the accolades.
China (since other countries are too small etc), we have come a long way without sacrificing liberty (something most right wingers care two hoots about)
or the environment (something no right winger cares two hoots about) or even causing the deaths of 30-50 million human lives (which also most right wingers care two hoots about)
to famines during the great leap forward.
Apparently it is ok to live like this as Chinese have got “growth". see more here
This is responded to with: But China course corrected spectacularly, No sign of Congress having done so.
And the irony here is unimaginable. Those chest thumping, swadeshi slogan shouting people are comparing India with a economy built on FDI and open economy principles without being a single bit apologetic regarding their past behaviour. Had it not been for the swadeshi road block from RSS and JP between 77-79, India would have leapt ahead.
IBM was here in the 70’s, Swadeshi gang along with ‘nationalists’ threw them and more famously Coca-Cola out. Thereby souring the investment climate for a long long while to come.
English, which drove growth in the services sector exports (and had a multiplier impact on rest of the economy), was opposed tooth and nail by the ‘nationalists’.
So a fact that is missed often is: Given the choices at the time, Congress represented the best bet. The alternatives were much worse.
This would be responded by protest that 3 years of Janta Party can’t excuse the remaining years of Congress rule.The answer to this is not completely. But its the fact that Janta party rule did impact the direction the country was taking. It stopped the reformist streak dead in it’s tracks.
This response is also a blatant attempt to wash the sins that RSS-BJP was party to. RSS and its proxy Jan Sangh was a part of the government. They set the agenda for the government of which ABV and Sushma Swaraj were proud members of.
Till much later the ‘nationalists’ were opposing the introduction of computers in government by Rajeev Gandhi. I can show you picture of ABV on a buffalo to prove that ABV was no less dramatic than Mulayam in his days.
Another gem: RSS opposed electricity dams as they claimed that sucking electricity out of it will reduce the potency of the water to irrigate crops.
One more: Does anyone remember slogans such as “Jehar Pepsi” (Pepsi used to be called Lehar Pepsi in those days).
They opposed economic reforms tooth and nail, terming it a sell out to MNCs. (Ironically, the current government is now leading a sell-out to corporate interests over citizen interests, but thats another days topic). Insurance FDI is most interesting one. PC created FDI in Insurance bill in 1997-98 initially with 49% limit. But BJP blocked it. PC begged to allow 20% FDI in insurance but no, Swadeshi BJP was not okay for sellout of LIC. Then ABV comes to power and bill was passed with 26% limit with Congress support. BJP was bitten with swadeshi bug again for 10 years when they blocked chnage in limit to 49% for 10 freaking years during UPA. Within 6 months, they have the audacity to bring the same bill and will again be passed with Congress support.
So any ‘gyan’ about how ‘nationalists’ called RSS drive progressive change is a piece of big pile of stale cow shit.
At this point, question will be raised regarding Black money and Corruption. And i agree this is the single biggest area where Congress failed India multiple times. Congress has been soft on corruption and India has a parallel economy of black money dealings but that does not means Congress as a whole is corrupt. There are some bad apples in Congress but not all. As a Congress supporter, I was more frustrated with Congress's inability to break the nexus of those bad politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen.
This is reason i turned a AAP sympathiser when Arvind Kejriwal started a new party although i was vocally critical of whole Lokpal and nation on ransom "India aganist Corruption" thing. I do not see how yet another institution can fix the woes of Indian bureaucracy. Creating a new body with legislative, judiciary and execution power more powerful than elected parliament is not the solution. Its not democratic to begin with. And I am not sure how long will it take for corrupts to find ways into if it holds all the power. Rats are planted in those places where it returns value.
Another aspect of 2G and Coalgate that people tends to forget are that for the first time in history of India, people spent jail time. From politicians like DMK leaders, kalmadi etc bureaucrats and corporates went to jail. Around same time, the split in 'India against corruption' took place. The day Prashant Bhushan spoke about crony capitalism at Jantar Mantar, the split came. One party emerged and Annaji went back to wherever he came from.
All prominent leaders(Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi, Baba Ramdev, SriSri Ravi Sankar, VK Singh) of IAC movement except Arvind kejriwal are sitting ducks now that INC is out of power. Mission accomplished!! Another gem, all except Anna are part of BJP now and not a single peep from them regarding status of beloved Lokpal and black money. Kiran bedi's pitiful tweets would had be source of amusement to me if it was not sad. So theory that IAC/Lokpal was RSS-sponsored drama to destabilize UPA-II does not sounds very far from truth.
Leaving the 'imposters' aside, lets talk about the real 'nationalists'. BJP blocked parliament for 6 sessions in 3 years between 2011 and 2013 completely on the basis of CAG reports on 2G and Coal scam. That's ~70% of the time of legislative assembly. Without proper legislation power, no government can work. If this act of politics from BJP was not betrayal to nation, i dont know what can be. BJP members including Arun Jaitley raised slogan 'PM chor hai' in parliament. When they comes in power, Mr Arun Jaitley did a mother of u-turn on CAG's validity and claiming that CAG is nothing but a retrospective on what could have been done better, probably when Congress said the same, there must be spelling mistake. Mr Jaitley you are nothing but a two-faced hypocrite.
On bringing black money back, Tunes changed from distributing 15-20 lakh to each poor Indian (~10-30 trillion USD, multiple times of Indian GDP) to mann ki baat of 'i dont know how much money is stashed abroad'. Now BJP is following the same process of revealing names of the tax offenders against whom police has strong evidence. I have not seen any positive effort from new government to fill the important open posts like RTI dept chief, CVO etc. Forget big Congress leaders, They have not even filed a case against Damaad shree Robert Vadra, easiest target of all, only used him in election rhetorics. So tell me are you serious, are you serious, are you serious on corruption ? whats wrong with you ?
Fun fact: China has similar corruption levels and govt officials expects a "gift" left behind. Also Black money outflow from China is 2.5 times of India.
Day to day life corruption can only be solved through automation. If there is no middle man, no chance of corruption at all. That's why i am such a big proponent of Aadhar card and identity service. No prize for guessing that BJP opposed it as well in UPA time (and did a u-turn when came to power).
I dont know about any solutions for big ticket corruption as when lot of money is involved, you dont know who sell out his/her principles. But i would put my money on making politics free of criminals. Here again, stats are more favorable to Congress when it comes to serious crime accused be it candidates, members of parliament or ministers.
So next time, you rant about Congress is corrupt, please question BJP as well and how they are helping Rajasthan police in search of rape accused minister Nihal chand Meghwal or defend tadipaar party president of yours Amit Shah. But dont worry too much, both will get clean chits very very soon :)
Somewhere around now a 'nationalist' right winger will pull out a paper done by Swamy Iyer where he explores what would have happened had India started reforming earlier. Socialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India, this explores the number of deaths that could have been avoided had economic reform started 'earlier'.
This is fair criticism of Congress's economic policy. Economic reform should have indeed started earlier.
Who stalled and slowed those reforms? As illustrated above, the ‘nationalists’ will have to take the blame as well.
Even today, what passes as reforms is essentially, RSS-BJP cosying up with domestic industrialists(Adani/Ambani Inc.) to loot this country and its citizens.
The structure of environmental protection, land rights is slowly but surely being dismantled to blatantly favour industry. Rajasthan now allegedly has a law that says that people who refuse to sell their land will be jailed. So much for liberty.
The very same guys who proudly cite the above paper will not cite another paper that Swamy wrote two years later. The Elephant That Became a Tiger: 20 Years of Economic Reform in India which talks about the strides India made post 1991. Ironically, stewarded by the Congress.