Failure to follow the path of socialism Parties guilty of violating the constitutional obligation Rajindar Sachar The country is going through a chaotic spell of elections in various states. Soon we will go through the same exercise at the national level. At times like these the main political parties are expected to prove to the voters that they have honestly tried their best to carry out the mandate of our Constitution to constitute India into, amongst others, a Socialist Republic. But die-hard pro-capitalist apologists in our social set-up try to laugh away this commitment by suggesting that the word socialism was not incorporated in the Constitution in 1950, but was brought in later by an amendment to the Constitution in 1975 and has no relevance in the present times, especially in the post-1990 India. But it is precisely the failure of those advocates of the so-called global opening up that is responsible for our countrys present misery. Article 39(b) of the Constitution was always understood to mean that in India we have to endeavour to set up a socialist society. This is brought out specifically by Dr. Ambedkar in reply to Prof K.T. Shah, who wanted socialism to be incorporated in the Constitution at the drafting stage. Dr. Ambedkar, while expressing his inability to do so for technical reasons, explained that socialism as such was already included in the directive principles. He explained thus: “What I would like to ask Prof. Shah is this: ‘If these directive principles to which I have drawn attention are not socialistic in their direction and in their content, I fail to understand what more socialism can be?’ Therefore, my submission is that these socialist principles are already embodied in our Constitution and it is unnecessary to accept this amendment.” It is self-evident that to the extent there is failure by any government in following the course of the socialist path, it will be held guilty of violating its constitutional obligation. The innocent but misplaced faith of those who still continue to believe that the development of the Indian economy can follow the false premise of globalisation ignores the warning given by respectable economists even of the USA who have clearly pointed out two ominous developments - one in the financial realm and the other relating to the real economy. To talk against globalisation in the well-cloistered quarters of governments and the corporate sector is looked upon as almost treason. So let me invoke Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate economist, who in his book (2006) is very caustic about the assumed benefits of globalisation. He has commented forcefully that Globalisation is neither socially benign nor has it been instrumental in reducing poverty. According to him, globalisation has been detrimental to the poor and other weaker sections of society. Globalisation policies have been responsible for many ills of the global financial crisis and loss of employment as inefficient industries closed down under pressure from international competition. The lesson to be drawn from the economic crisis in the US and Europe is clear, namely, that it were the oligarchic financial institutions that were chiefly responsible for it. The sordid story of multinational banks like Citibank and Goldman Sachs which by their greedy operations are responsible for damaging the US economy with their private profit-oriented policies and being rescued only because of the intervention of the US government and its Treasury clearly exposes the much-touted efficiency of the private sector over the public sector. The latest financial disaster in the US relates to — the case of J.P. Morgan, Chase Bank, the largest in the US by assets, which faces multiple investigations and a $5.8 billion loss on wrong bets on credit derivatives. Some of the well-known American banks are already under suspicion of the allegation that their firms rigged interest rates or were involved in money laundering. Ironically, the UPA government still feels that the talisman for growth is permitting these very foreign banks unchecked entry into the Indian market. The government, almost on bended knees, invokes the aid from foreign multinationals and apparently justifies it on the ground that we do not have sufficient financial resources for development and therefore need foreign capital. How mischievously wrong! According to the Union Minister of Commerce, in the last ten years only about $250 billion (about Rs 12 lakh crore) has been received in India. As against this, “The top 500 listed companies have enough cash on their books to double India’s power generation capacity of 2.00,000 mw or build over 40,000 km of six-lane high ways every year (compared with the current 800km), but are refusing to invest because of the slowing economic growth that has been aggravated by policy paralysis. By March 31, 2012, these companies were sitting on cash and cash equivalent of over Rs 9.3 lakh crore or $160 billion”. India is certainly not shining and this is even clear from the Human Development Report released by the Planning Commission in October, 2011, showing the widening gap between the rich and the poor. “In India, the distribution of assets is extremely unequal, with the top 5 per cent of the households possessing 38 per cent of the total assets and the bottom 60 per cent of households owning a mere 13 per cent. Just 66 resident billionaires in India control asset worth more than a fifth of the country’s GDP. Capital at large is three times more concentrated than in the United States”. If the main parties continue to violate the mandate of the Constitution, let them beware of the foresight shown by Dr. Ambedkar, who when winding up the debate in the Constituent Assembly over 60 years ago while approving the Constitution warned us, “We are going to enter a life of contradictions. In politics, we will have equality and in social and economic life, we will have inequality…..We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this assembly has so laboriously constructed”. I humbly submit that the above warning continues to have the same relevance and urgency today. Are the political parties listening? The writer is a former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 02:02:00 +0000
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