Nehru - “Asian Equivalent To Stalin”

By A.S Narayanmswami

Some of the statements reported to have been made by the Prime Minister regarding ceilings on land and the private sector in Industry should cause a jolt to all students of agricultural and political economy. He is reported to have stated:

The distinction between land and its Income seems, with great respect to the Prime Minister, to be a distinction without a difference. It is a truism that land has little value but for the income it yields. However much the producer tries to adopt modern methods of agriculture, the income on his land depends on certain imponderable factors like climate and rainfall which are the gifts of nature and are not in the power of any government to bestow. The income Is correlated to the land, its extent and fertility, and depends ultimately, as stated above, on God’s grace. How does the Prime Minister reconcile his present statement with the recommendation of the Planning Commission, of which he is the Chairman, that the ceiling on land is to be on the basis of an annual income of Rs. 3,600, a disastrously low limit which is being forced on unwilling State Governments?

On the question of private industry, the Prime Minister states that the correlation of private enterprise (meaning big enterprise) with democracy is wholly unjustified and has no meaning and may and does come in the way of the functioning of the democratic apparatus. Let It be noted that the term ‘ private sector’ is a misnomer. It is really the public sector in which vast numbers of shareholders, mostly the middle class, have invested their hard earned savings.

There are only two sectors, the Public sector and the Government sector. Secondly, one cannot understand at all how private enterprise is inconsistent with democracy. On the other hand, democracy based on freedom and liberty paves the way for free enterprise and the free flow of private capital, as it is done in all democratic countries of the West.

One should rather think that Socialism or the Socialistic pattern of society is inconsistent will full-fledged democracy in that the ideal of the Socialistic State seems to be to aggrandise and appropriate to itself all the energies and resources of individuals and keep them to itself, of course with the ultimate object of effecting a fair distribution among the people.

The aggrandisement is certain and has been going on but the distribution among the people will be almost an impossible feat unless there Is ruthless regimentation as in Russia and China. Socialism cannot be achieved by non-violence, though the Prime Minster fondly imagines it can be.

History has been teaching us that “Communist ideology is inseparable from the Communist technique and they are both part of the same gospel“. We should know clearly to what goal is the country is being led.

Is it to be a Welfare State under our Constitution or a Socialist or Communist State where almost all Industrial and banking concerns are to be nationalised?

Is the citizen to exist for the State and not the State for the citizen? Is our Prime Minister “the Asian equivalent to Stalin”, as George Bernard Shaw depicted him on the basis of his speeches in 1948?  Let the public judge before it’s too late.