In my previous post I had ranted about Planning Commission. I will go a bit more into detail in this post.
The PC had a set of guidelines within which the entire premise of growth was to be structured.
And here I copy and paste from the data provided by that venerable department.
Our Second Five Year Plan seeks to rebuild rural India, to lay the foundations of industrial progress, and to secure to the greatest extent feasible opportunities for weaker and under-privilteged sections of our people and the balanced development of all parts of the country. For a country whose economic development was long retarded these are difficult tasks but, given th.e effort and the sacrifice, they are well within out capacity to achieve.
In the 1950s, they had recognized the need. They had put forth a plan. And I am sure, at least in the upper echeleons of power, they stuck to it assiduously. But now, in 2010, I hear that farmers have taken their own lives. Due to pressures from micro finance. Organizations.
No really. If you have followed the news cycle I am sure you would have seen/heard/read somewhere. It makes my blood boil with rage.Perhaps it is a black anger formented more than half a century ago by the very same apparatchiks who wanted to force an ideology amongst the millions without a proper understanding. And even today, they don’t.
A rising standard of life, or material welfare as it is sometimes called, is of course not an end in itself. Essentially, it is a means to a better intellectual and cultural life. A society which has to devote the bulk of its working force or its working hours to the production of the bare where-withals of life is to that extent limited in its pursuit of higher ends. Economic development is intended to expand the community’s productive power and to provide the environment in which there is scope for the expression and application of diverse faculties and urges. It follows that the pattern of development and the lines along which economic activity is to be directed must from the start be related to the basic objectives which society has in view. The task before an underdeveloped country is not merely to get better results within the existing framework of economic and social institutions but to mould and refashion these so that they contribute effectively to the realisation of wider and deeper social values.
The above paragraph started with the title, A Socialistic Society. Hypocrites. And this is why. If I was to have a society for the common good of all, it would be a big cause for failure. The whole concept is so fundamentally against human nature. At the most crude level, let me ask you, the reader, this: Why would I want to spend my precious time and effort only to have it shared with the rest? Of course you could argue that they have something that I want.
But what if I did not? A democratic form of governance was adopted. Which was splendid. But a society cannot achieve greatness by divying up individual achievements. The whole dogma was based on some utopian vision of a future society which functioned as a large family. If history has taught un anything, a large family fights.
In the land of Mahabharatha, these dumbwits, charmed by free India’s first Prime Minister set forth the plans to self destruct the newly founded Republic. Idealism is fantastic. Even laudable. But do not espouce that from your high alter when I have to struggle for my very next meal.
The 3rd paragraph, in this guideline, is perhaps the most signifcant of all.
These values or basic objectives have recently leen summed up in the phrase ‘socialist pattern of society’. Essentially, this means that the basic criterion for determining the lines of advance must not be private^profit but social gain, and that the pattern of development and the structure of socio-economic relations should be so planned that they result not only in appreciable increases in national income and employment but also in greater equality in incomes and wealth. Major decisions regarding production, distribution, consumption and investment—and in fact all significant socio-economic relationships—must be made by agencies informed by social purpose. The benefits of economic development must accrue more and more to the relatively less privileged classes of society, and there should be a progressive reduction of the concentration of incomes, wealth and economic power. The problem is to create a milieu in which the small man who has so far had little opportunity of perceiving and participating in the immense possibilities of growth through organised effort is enabled to put in his best in the interests of a higher standard of life for himself and increased prosperity for the country. In the process, the rises in economic and social status. Vertical mobility of labour is thus no less important than horizontal mobility, for nothing is more destructive of hope and more inhibitive of effort than a feeling that the accident of birth or of a poor start in life is likely to come in the way of a capable person rising in life in terms of economic and social status. For creating the appropriate conditions, the State has to take on heavy responsibilities as the principal agency speaking for and acting on behalf of the community as a whole. The public sector has to expand rapidly. It has not only to initiate developments which the private sector is either unwilling or unable to undertake; it has to play the dominant role in shaping the entire pattern of investments in the economy, whether it makes the investments directly or whether these are made by the private sector. The private sector has to play its part within the framework of the comprehensive plan accepted by the community. The resources available for investment are thrown up in the last analysis by social processes. Private enterprise, free pricing, private management are all devices to further what are truly social ends; they can only be justified in terms of social results.
WOW! That was quite set of edicts. For that is what they. These guys, and I take a chauvinistic view that the people involved were mostly men, had just set forth the rules for the newly free society to be enslaved. All it did not say was, “Welcome to Free India. You have all the freedoms accorded to you in the constitution. But you just need to take our permission for it. In triplicate.
The text in bold and blue perhaps defines the flirtation started by a Prime Minister and his coterie. A PM who came from an extremely priviledged background. In fact, we were so enamored by certain politics that it was even reflected in our selection of ‘official attire’ of a senior civil servant. The Bandhgala, also called a Nehru coat. AKA – The Mao coat.
Chew on this while I sink my prodound sadness in some malted beverage.The next post will explore the other guidelines.
