One of the more startling facts of Indian poverty is that there has been no major agitation on economic issues since 1974, when George Fernandes organized the nationwide railway strike that Indira Gandhi crushed with massive force. Is this because George Fernandes joined the Establishment in 1977?
The question is neither rhetorical, nor dramatically personalized. One man’s fortunes cannot change the course of class equations, even if that man is Fernandes. But a fundamental shift took place in Indian politics in 1977. With the absorption of the socialists into the ruling Janata Party in the north, and the conversion of the Marxists into the permanent establishment of Bengal, opposition as a political fact disappeared from the matrix of Indian politics. The only voices that were ever raised on behalf of the poor were co-opted into power. After that opposition became part of the seesaw on which two sides of the ruling class sat. The laws of fortune and democracy decreed that when the Congress was high, the others were low; and vice versa. (The Communists were a law unto themselves; they have not descended from their Calcutta perch.)
Previous to 1977, opposition was on issues: economic policy, corruption, democratic functioning, rule of law, social justice. After 1977 opposition became an exercise in unseating the government, either through a numbers game in Parliament, or by creating conditions within the country that would make governance untenable. This is why the socialists, George Fernandes included, never went back to the people when they lost power in 1979. They waited in Delhi for the Congress to either exhaust itself or become a victim of its own misdemeanors. No economic issue was raised to any substantive extent in the eighties, or indeed the nineties, a decade dominated by the ultimate Establishment Man, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and wasted by the mavericks that succeeded him. This was also partly because the leopard had changed its spots.
The nature of Indian poverty has never been quite in sync with the nature of Indian economic struggles. The poor can be easily recognized in India. They live below or at the subsistence level. They used to inhabit the fringe of rural society, but now have migrated also to the homeless streets of principal cities. Broadly, but not wholly, they belong to the traditionally subjugated castes and classes, including the Dalits and a growing section of the minorities. But those who led the struggle for the redistribution of India’s wealth never really fought the battles of those at or below the poverty line. Trade unions were the principal armored tanks on one side of the war, but the trade unions themselves represented a class of Indians that was significantly better off than the genuinely poor.
It was axiomatic. Anyone with a job immediately became part of the haves. The haves became, quickly, an exploiting class. Milovan Djilas discovered a festering New Class among the apparatchiks of post-world war European communism. He would have been exhausted searching for a definition of the “jobbery” class that emerged out of government-guaranteed employment in India. By the eighties, the credibility of the working class was in tatters from its own excesses; by the nineties, it was dead. In the villages too, the economic issues were in the grip of the small and medium farmers, rather than the landless.
While leaders like Charan Singh maximized the political mileage of this power; lesser mortals like Mahendra Singh Tikait lit up the sky briefly before they ended up on earth like damp squibs. No one ever saw a national struggle across India demanding higher wages for landless laborers, or even an end to the rape and humiliation to which their women were routinely subjected.
The have-nots had neither the strength to organize, nor the inspirational leadership that could have overcome this weakness. The Marxists in Bengal did expand their base into the rural poor, but stopped at the point where land reform expanded their support base to a level where, in the arithmetic of a democratic ballot, they became virtually unbeatable. It was not in their political interest to take the argument further. The further enrichment, if that is the correct word to use in an environment shorn of riches, was left to the invidious trickle-down theory. Some of the surplus from agricultural growth and services would find its way to the marginalized. The guardians of economic upheaval, therefore, had no vested interest in the poor. And the trade union in which they had invested withered. Leaders like George Fernandes had nowhere to go but into the intellectual wasteland of caste politics, thinly justified by theories of social justice.
Inevitably this was a railway platform on their journey to another destination. Once opposition became a single-point exercise, after 1980, in achieving power for individuals and parties rather than a desire toward economic and social uplift, the BJP proved that it had no equal in the new dynamics. It was the only political formation that understood that it was not sufficient to defeat Rajiv Gandhi.
To unseat an individual was comparatively easy, particularly if that individual was being cooperative in any case. The BJP sought to defeat the idea of the Congress. That was the singular purpose of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. But here too the BJP received totally unexpected cooperation from Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress when the leader and the party succumbed to pressure from Muslims on the Shah Bano issue. The ground was furrowed by Shah Bano. It was seeded by Ayodhya. It was fertilized by Bofors. It was harvested by the BJP.
As a political party, the BJP was distinguished by the absence of any economic philosophy. In its early days it simply mirrored the economic liberalism of the Swatantra Party, and had a phrase rather than a program as its platform: get rid of the “license-permit raj”, a code-phrase for Nehruvian restrictions on the private sector that later reached counter-productive proportions under Indira Gandhi. In opposition it did not feel any particular need to outline a coherent and credible economic program; clichés were sufficient. Economics was not its raison d’etre. In power the BJP adopted pragmatism. As an option it was both inevitable and useful, a combination that should normally be considered lucky in public life.
The BJP was not burdened with any past leader who had spouted Marx or even Adam Smith with any particular fervor. Economic reform also sent all the right signals. It was a departure from the Nehruvian past that the BJP was committed to changing; it was just the message that the United States (the BJP’s preferred superpower) wanted to hear; and it went down well with the emerging middle class that provided an important crucible of support to the party. It also gave the party a modern sheen. The government was confident about negotiating a detour against any roadblock put up by the Congress, and time has proved that its confidence was justified. It was not quite prepared to hit a wall constructed by the RSS and George Fernandes.
The George Fernandes dilemma is easy to appreciate. The man of the year 1974 has traveled a long way in 28 years, but the direction of the journey is becoming evident. He is travelling in a circle. He is not going to end his career with a second railway strike, but the doctrinaire worm, long buried by necessity, just might be beginning to turn. The surprise is the ally that this doctrine has discovered. The RSS set out in search of an economic policy in the early nineties, when the first signs were becoming evident that a non-Congress coalition, with the BJP as its core presence, might be in a position to win a general election.
Economists set out in search of theories on the premise that they must work for the good of the people. This is why so much economic theory is non-national in the sense that while it may not be applicable to every national situation, it is certainly applicable to more than one nation. The RSS, which is India-centric, set out to define a national interest rather than an economic philosophy. The simplest subset of such a mind is property. Hence, all that is produced in India should be owned by India. This means, in turn, that it should be owned by Indians, since the foreigner cannot be trusted. It is easy enough to link this with the history of colonialism and economic exploitation by foreigners; but it also echoes a distrust of the rest of the world and its dismissal as unclean. (Less than a hundred years ago Motilal Nehru had to do penance to regain his caste after a trip from the West.) Mahatma Gandhi had colonialism in mind, just as George Washington had before him, when he gave a call for Swadeshi. But a nation’s economic strategy must evolve with its development. The Indian economy is not stuck in 1920. Its problem has been that it was stuck for a long while in 1950, and efforts to move out of 1970 are still continuing.
Disinvestment was bound to be the touchstone of this internal battle within the ruling coalition extending from the RSS on the one side to the socialists on the other, with the BJP and the regional parties at various points in between. At the heart is the rather limited view that “our” property will go to “them”; the outsider will get what should be indubitably with an Indian.
What is both disconcerting and fascinating is that such economic nationalism sits so comfortably beside economic theft. There is no outrage whatsoever when Indians indulge in open loot of the Indian economy and the nation’s financial resources. The Ruias actually brag that they have taken only some sixty billion rather than higher sums alleged; tell anyone who listens that they have no intention of paying anything back, and find a friendly reception among all the privileged of the present ruling group. The Indian economy may have moved from crooked British exploitation to straight Indian theft, but how many patriots find that offensive?
All this debate, conflict and tension is about the economy of the haves. The have-nots do not form a part of the debate. This is understandable. It is because they do not form a part of the Indian economy.
