It is perfectly and completely possible to arrest this price rise. What is required is: Number one, immediately roll back your budgetary hikes. Number two, immediately universalise the PDS system and release your extra food stocks and distribute to the people. Number three, Ban Futures Trading and speculative trading on all essential commodities. Number four, stop giving these concessions to the rich. Instead, collect that money, improve public investment, give jobs to the people, so that the salaries they earn will increase domestic demand in our economy and that will spur the growth.
All this is perfectly possible. But if you do not do this, let me warn you, if you do not do this, the other things will happen because those who have money are getting more money and what will they do with it? It will only be the growth of crony capitalism. You had an IPL and BPL, that I spoke of earlier. Now, we heard about the Commonwealth Games scam that is happening there. Then, you have illegal mining that is going on. You will have growth of this sort of activities which will further impose burdens on the common man and increase and fatten the profits of the else. That is why, this process of crony capitalism is also distorting our democratic process. I am not going into that.
It is distorting our democratic process. Putting a ceiling by Election Commission for election expenses is a mockery of what amount is being spent. As a result of crony capitalism in elections, democracy itself is being destroyed. Forget socialism, democracy itself is being distorted under this process. Therefore, finally, I am saying, the entire question of controlling price rise is not a technical question of containing inflation.
You have to seriously rethink the economic trajectory that we are pursuing. Otherwise, crony capitalism will affect our democracy. What we pride ourselves as the biggest achievement in the process of decolonisation anywhere in the world is granting of adult suffrage in India through our Constitution. In that entire process and that experiment of this idea of India, that in itself will come under great threat. Therefore, I would only like to end by the warning that Babasaheb Ambedkar gave when he presented the present draft of the Constitution to the Constituent Assembly.
I am not giving any warning from the barrel of a gun but we all have to keep this warning in mind, otherwise, those sorts of grave threats are going to mount. What did Babasaheb Ambedkar said on 25th November, 1949, when he presented this draft of the Constitution to the Constituent Assembly? He said, " On the 26th of January, 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. "
In politics, we will have equality and in social and economic life, we will have inequality. In politics, we will be recognizing the principle of one man, one vote and one vote, one value. In our social and economic life, we shall by reason of our social and economic structure continue to deny the principle of one man, one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?
How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. 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 laboriously built up.
So, please understand what you are dealing with. It is not merely a technical question of reducing price by a certain quantity or a certain percentage. You are dealing with a warning that Babasaheb gave more than 60 years ago. Sir, our country has completed 60 years. In your culture, in my culture, in most of Indian cultures, 60 years is very valuable in the sense that we call it Shashtipoorthi, if you remember; and when an individual completes Shashtipoorthi, he begins a new life. If you are really talking of the aam aadmi, then that Shashtipoorthi must be utilised to start a new life and therefore the time has come to reverse these policies. Otherwise, the warning of Ambedkar will come true, and, therefore, what I am saying is, do not allow the country to say what it said when Indira Gandhiji announced ‘Garibi Hatao.' After few years, all of us were shouting as students ‘Garibi Lotao’, return back what we were because our situation had become worse.
Now, in the name of aam aadmi, please do not inflict all these burdens on aam aadmi. Otherwise, there will be rebels, there will be agitations, there will be struggles but to gain the respect that we want to build for India as a modern independent India, reverse these policies and accept these concrete suggestions that I have given.
Source: www.citucentre.org
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