10-07-2006, 12:02 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Congress retro </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
Twenty points for nostalgia
In re-invoking the 20-Point Programme and the "Garibi Hatao" slogan - used so effectively in the 1971 election - the Congress may or may not quicken the pulse of voters, but, certainly, it has given nostalgia buffs their moment of the year. The 20-Point Programme - never mind if the Manmohan Singh version actually enumerates 64 points - was a product of the Emergency, announced to the nation and the world in 1975 by a regime determined to re-order India in the image of the Supreme Leader, the Son of Supreme Leader and an unending series of Soviet-style shibboleths. Not that it could always escape Indian humour. Apocryphal legend has it that the 20-Point Programme was actually a 21-Point Programme but, by day two, the final point mysteriously vanished. The rumour went that the 21st point was actually a commitment to implement the previous 20; horrified at its implications, the Emergency regime quickly, if belatedly, withdrew it. "Garibi Hatao" or "Banish Poverty" was a decidedly more successful political gimmick. It was used potently in the 1971 Lok Sabha election, the high noon of Indira Gandhi's pernicious socialism, and helped the Congress to a thumping majority. Those two words did more than just make an empty promise. They encapsulated, to political analysts, social scientists and, of course, ordinary citizens, the populism and crass symbolism, the nationalisation binge and the security hysteria that achieved little - What did the abolition of Privy Purses save? A few million rupees? - but were politically expedient, even if they unhinged key institutions in the long run. The 20-Point Programme belongs to a strange chapter in India's past. It can be summed in a pity phrase: "Unbridled statism." India has moved on since then, but not the Congress, not its mindset, not the high priests and priestesses its Government appointed to the National Advisory Council.
The party's intellectuals still believe - contrary to all empirical evidence - that poverty can be removed and garibi can be hatao-ed not by economic growth spurred by deregulation, but by Government fiat, by state subsidy, by throwing tax-payer money into profligate schemes that involve, as the old line goes, paying one set of people to dig holes and another to fill these up. Obviously nobody seriously believes the all new 20-Point Programme will transform India into the land of condensed milk and honey. It makes no specific promises, introduces no targeted schemes. It talks loosely of "poverty eradication", "child welfare", "slum improvement", "housing for all". It commits itself to "food security", without stating whether this can be better achieved by buying wheat cheaply from producers abroad, or subsidising wasteful, low-productivity, water-depleting agriculture on land that could probably be better used as SEZs. Aside from its philosophical vacuousness, the revised 20-Point Programme points to a stunting of the Congress's political instincts. Ever since it accidentally found its way into Government in 2004, the party has been searching for a big idea to capture public imagination, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, where Assembly election is due next February. If harking back to Mrs Gandhi and a 30-year-old pamphlet is the best it can do, its rivals must be grinning. The 20-Point Programme mentality is completely out of tune with contemporary India and its aspirations. It cannot win elections anymore. Tomorrow's wars cannot be won by yesterday's warriors.
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Joke of 21st century
The Pioneer Edit Desk
Twenty points for nostalgia
In re-invoking the 20-Point Programme and the "Garibi Hatao" slogan - used so effectively in the 1971 election - the Congress may or may not quicken the pulse of voters, but, certainly, it has given nostalgia buffs their moment of the year. The 20-Point Programme - never mind if the Manmohan Singh version actually enumerates 64 points - was a product of the Emergency, announced to the nation and the world in 1975 by a regime determined to re-order India in the image of the Supreme Leader, the Son of Supreme Leader and an unending series of Soviet-style shibboleths. Not that it could always escape Indian humour. Apocryphal legend has it that the 20-Point Programme was actually a 21-Point Programme but, by day two, the final point mysteriously vanished. The rumour went that the 21st point was actually a commitment to implement the previous 20; horrified at its implications, the Emergency regime quickly, if belatedly, withdrew it. "Garibi Hatao" or "Banish Poverty" was a decidedly more successful political gimmick. It was used potently in the 1971 Lok Sabha election, the high noon of Indira Gandhi's pernicious socialism, and helped the Congress to a thumping majority. Those two words did more than just make an empty promise. They encapsulated, to political analysts, social scientists and, of course, ordinary citizens, the populism and crass symbolism, the nationalisation binge and the security hysteria that achieved little - What did the abolition of Privy Purses save? A few million rupees? - but were politically expedient, even if they unhinged key institutions in the long run. The 20-Point Programme belongs to a strange chapter in India's past. It can be summed in a pity phrase: "Unbridled statism." India has moved on since then, but not the Congress, not its mindset, not the high priests and priestesses its Government appointed to the National Advisory Council.
The party's intellectuals still believe - contrary to all empirical evidence - that poverty can be removed and garibi can be hatao-ed not by economic growth spurred by deregulation, but by Government fiat, by state subsidy, by throwing tax-payer money into profligate schemes that involve, as the old line goes, paying one set of people to dig holes and another to fill these up. Obviously nobody seriously believes the all new 20-Point Programme will transform India into the land of condensed milk and honey. It makes no specific promises, introduces no targeted schemes. It talks loosely of "poverty eradication", "child welfare", "slum improvement", "housing for all". It commits itself to "food security", without stating whether this can be better achieved by buying wheat cheaply from producers abroad, or subsidising wasteful, low-productivity, water-depleting agriculture on land that could probably be better used as SEZs. Aside from its philosophical vacuousness, the revised 20-Point Programme points to a stunting of the Congress's political instincts. Ever since it accidentally found its way into Government in 2004, the party has been searching for a big idea to capture public imagination, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, where Assembly election is due next February. If harking back to Mrs Gandhi and a 30-year-old pamphlet is the best it can do, its rivals must be grinning. The 20-Point Programme mentality is completely out of tune with contemporary India and its aspirations. It cannot win elections anymore. Tomorrow's wars cannot be won by yesterday's warriors.
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Joke of 21st century