Is The Congress Nuts?

Can you believe it? Can you really, really believe it? The Congress hasactually dug up and dusted out its old IndiraGandhi slogan of Garibi Hatao (Remove Poverty — parodied later as GaribHatao, Remove the poor) and the 20-point poverty eradication programme! Ifnothing else, this amazing action shows up the abysmal poverty of ideas andimagination among the current top brass of the party. In this age of instantcommunication, should anyone vote this party to power if it can’t even thinkof a catchy slogan for its work programmes?

It also makes for a déjà vu situation for us journalists (although I was achild then, I quite remember the snorts and smirks expressed by relatives andlater by my teachers of economics about the programme)—does nothing reallychange in India? I’m vividly reminded of that splendid photograph of the firsttorpedo-like Indian reactor being transported by bullock-cart as I sit amidstthe splendors of Maurya Sheraton hotel in Delhi hearing about the 37 companiesin today’s India turning over more than a billion dollars every year. Theseare the companies that will groom the new 100 billionaires of tomorrow, some ofwhom will rule the world as MNCs, even as politicians of this country cling totheir obscene pillows and daydream about the 1970s.

What makes me even more uncomfortable is the fact that Planning Commissiondeputy chairman M S Ahluwalia as well as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh areassociated with this resurrection. They are among the main architects of the 90s'economic liberalization. Have they paused to think for one moment that if thispolicy had been so successful, we didn’t have to go to the IMF for theumpteenth time and launch the reforms?

A more important point though is: Was Garibi Hatao really a goldenwand for Indira? As far as I remember, that was the blackest period of theIndian economy. A period when it hurtled or was pushed towards doom, shackledand tied so much that it couldn’t breathe till the late 80s. The Constitutionwas amended 28 times during 1966-80 to protect the various new laws and to allowordinances through, the right to property was taken away in 1971. The economiccollapse was all pervasive—the crisis in food and forex, the plan holidays,the terrible inflation, Indira Gandhi's perceived need to ally with the US, the57-per cent devaluation and the wars. The lone saving grace was agriculture,thanks to the Green Revolution. During 1966-81, we went thrice for extraordinaryaid and the IMF. Exports stagnated at 4.4 per cent in 1970-75, industry grew at5 per cent, and import tariffs climbed steadily to touch the frightening 50 percent in the 80s.

Surely Manmohan Singh remembers all of this. He shot to fame and closer toIndira Gandhi with his inflation management during this period. Before this, in1964, his cautiously argued study on the government’s shooting-in-the-footexport strategy had remained only in the mindspace of the academics. Hindsighthas shown that if we didn't have an anti-export bias, the improvement in forexsituation would have been more than enough to finance the heavy industrystrategy. Gandhi’s tightening noose had only served to worsen socialisticpretensions. As Jagdish Bhagwati were to say later, in his inimitable acerbicstyle: "We had reproduced beautifully the disadvantages of communism, withoutany of the benefits!"

Is it this that we want to remind ourselves of? Garibi Hatao wasmerely an election slogan designed to stave off the imminent collapse of theCongress and to stem the rise of Jaiprakash Narayan. That it was not successfulis clearly brought out by the emergency of 1976. The Congress needs to shed allold practices, despite Sonia Gandhi’s rather effusive, eternal love for hermother-in-law’s working style. Surely even a C-grade advertising agency canthink of better slogans.