Another opiate for masses

A CURSORY look at the categories of people allowed free bus travel in Punjab throws up the following: women, children studying up to Class X, police and jail personnel, MLAs, former MLAs, journalists, freedom fighters. This begs the question as to who pays? Similarly, other services such as power (agriculture use is free along with various categories based on caste), water, health, education, etc, have various categories of tariff/fee ranging from free to negligible. Over the years, successive governments in almost all states have made these allocations and are responsible for near-bankrupt and highly-indebted states, with infrastructure and services primarily existing on paper. All elections are fought on the platform of doles and freebies, with each party trying to outdo the other. Punjab, which was ranked No. 1 on most parameters of economic and human development, is today a poor shadow of its former glory. Successive governments are responsible for this dismal state of affairs, for they scuttled the entrepreneurship and enterprise of the people through corruption, neglect and total disregard for its institutions, systems, and the criminal justice system. They allowed the nexus of mafia and politician to be built and turned a blind eye to the gradual erosion of the well-being of the state and its people. As a result, today we have an electorate seeking a better quality of life but being asked to make do with free rations and the occasional free ride. To quote Margaret Thatcher, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Only in our case, it is pseudo-socialism, where the endgame is power at any cost for the politician, without any thought-out long-term policy for the overall development of the state.

Who are the ‘other people’ generating the money? Well, they are largely the middle class — i.e. the working middle class. The men and women who hit the road in the morning, whether it is employees, small and micro businesses, traders and farmers. They are the ones who pay their taxes on income, on consumption, on property, on almost every service and product if you are not part of the dole. Now, the new India has decided that they do not count — not enough votes to swing an election. So, let’s squeeze them… squeeze them dry. We are the only country among the large economies which did nothing for the employees and owners of the micro and small businesses throughout the pandemic — nothing. Yet, it is the middle class which is at the heart of this modern economy which we aspire to be. It is the middle class which runs the engine of industry, government, primary services, defence, and law. It is not the super-rich, who tend to be mere spectators to the toils of this nation, nor is it the poverty-ridden masses who have been reduced to standing in lines for everything from rations, hospitals, schools to temples. We squeeze this middle class at our own cost as a nation. High inflation, coupled with shrinking incomes, new taxes and the disruption caused by the trident of demonetisation, the pandemic and crony capitalism is breaking the back of society as we know it. As the middle class shrinks, it is only to feed the ever-growing numbers of the poor. It leads to the increased polarisation of society and the growing economic disparity. It is the sign of a nation whose very security and integrity are threatened.

The mind wanders to the early 1960s and college days. They do not seem so distant, but the distance travelled in terms of the shifting sands in politics and national goals is awe-inspiring. The direction in which we are headed today is not the one visualised at that time. Those were heady days spent over endless cups of coffee, engaged in serious debates on literature, economics, politics. Those were the days of long hair, simple cotton clothes, no brands, no shades… there was no TV, no WhatsApp; in short, no gadgets. Lecture notes, discussions on literature, politics were the stuff that life was made of.

I joined the Indian Police Service in 1966. The ’60s and ’70s were years of normal law and order situations. There were strong trade union movements — teachers, industrial workers, kisan sabhas, students, railway workers. Nearly all fields had union activity and nearly all political parties had their own front unions. The Congress and Leftist unions were dominant, but the RSS and the Jana Sangh had started making inroads. The primary activity of these unions was to exert pressure on government and industry to obtain better deals. However, they owed allegiance to political parties, whose goals they ascribed to, and they were very active during elections. They helped in mobilising their cadres, but it was based on ideological lines and not on religion, caste or money. Of course, there was an inbuilt structure of the caste system, and the Congress took maximum benefit of this. There was a subaltern dependence on religion but no vocalisation of this and no polarisation.

From the ’80s onwards, a series of events shook the tectonic plates of Indian politics and society. The emergence of Sikh militancy and Operation Bluestar, the killing of Pandits and their subsequent migration from the Kashmir valley, the massacres in J&K, UP, Mumbai, Gujarat… attack on Parliament. All these and many more such events aroused dormant forces which soon surfaced and took full advantage of the chaos and directionless leadership. The rightist organisations also started finding resonance. In the midst of all this came Advani’s rath yatra — this was the inflection point. It caught the people’s imagination and the process of polarisation on religious grounds started. The objective of any party is the seizure of power and in a democracy, through elections. The language of politics changed, and religion became a talking point, a rallying point.

Gradually, the Left faded away and the Congress forgot its Nehruvian socialism. Most of the major parties began to play catchup and today we have hard Hindutva, soft Hindutva, plain Hinduism and of course, Muslims and their cohorts. Alongside, the caste system is being exploited and political parties have no shame in using both religion and caste to divide and subdivide the people of this ancient civilisation.

The country became a cauldron of violence and communal violence. A new vocabulary came into being — Love Jihad, Gau Rakshaks, Romeo Squads, Bulldozer. There was no mention of economic goals and means. Marx had called religion ‘the opiate of the masses’; that may be true or false. However, religion does make you overlook the miseries of the present and look towards the glories of the future. We are talking of crores of people who do not get two square meals a day, no employment, no health or education facilities for their children. How do we address this immediate problem to ameliorate the miseries of the poor? It requires economic and industrial infrastructure, including health and education. This cannot be done overnight and so we find the easy way out. All that you have to do is target the poor and the vulnerable and then you magnanimously announce a series of freebies. Parties are getting quite creative in their promises of free cycles, phones, gas, small sums of money in the accounts of women, sarees. Lo and behold, the problem is solved, the state has done its duty, it has saved the poor man from starvation and deprivation, and it has done this with a political structure which ensures last-mile delivery and voila — wonder of wonders, it has done so without creating an infrastructure for development. The opiate works.

All the political parties are trying to do this but the one with the means, organisation and willpower is the winner. How about the people? They appear to be satisfied and they vote where their stomach is; after all, as per government records, 80 crore Indians were given free rations. Yet we claim to be a superpower or an aspiring one. A nation where the vast majority of the population has been reduced to dependence on government doles for fulfilling their very basic human need of food by successive governments, who have failed to lay out an economic and industrial pathway for the country. It will require the people themselves to organise and raise their voice to compel the political parties to spell out their agendas for development. The discourse needs to go back to development as it is critical that the focus is on long-term development and not short-term lollipops. India must chart out a map which enables it to compete in the modern world and that world is fast-changing. Today, the cold war is back, with nations getting divided into strategic blocs. This comes at a time when the pandemic has left economies in disarray. To find our seat at the high table, we must develop a strong middle class driving a stronger economy. We need this to thrive in a world of climate change and the transition from fossil fuel to sustainable energy. New technologies need to be developed in a fast-changing world. We missed the industrial revolution, we lagged far behind in the 20th century, let’s not miss this bus.

— The writer is ex-chairman of UPSC, former Manipur Governor and served as J&K DGP