Hidden in plain sight in the Congress manifesto 2024 is this bombshell, rather a boomerang. Under the head ‘Economy’, there is a declaration in bold print: ‘TIME FOR A RE-SET’. It adds: ‘After 33 years, the time is ripe for a reset of economic policy’. Needless to say, and as the document itself alludes to, the 33 years goes back to 1991 when then PM Narasimha Rao and FM Manmohan Singh unleashed a wave of economic reforms that changed the country’s fate and fortunes for ever and for good.
And this is what the Congress wants to ‘reset’ – rethink and reverse, being natural inferences, in the context of the party scion Rahul Gandhi’s continued references to redistribution of wealth and worse, to ‘revolution’. In a single and sinister sleight of ‘Hand’, Rahul’s Congress has not only distanced itself from the economic reforms of the only sane Government it ever gave the country in close to sixty years, but also negated them.
The words that follow say that the party’s new credo will be ‘work, wealth, welfare’, ominously implying the reforms had failed on these counts, even in the time of the two UPAs under Manmohan Singh as PM. After all, the very phrase ‘wealth creation’ entered the economic and political lexicon of the nation and remains still in vogue in tune with global lingo, thanks to the Economist Manmohan Singh. But then what is the point of telling this to a ‘mis’-leader who does not remember what he himself said an hour back?
In 1991, when the duo of PVN and MSingh took over the reins, the country was in the pits of economic decay. India was lagging in every national and international index. The two gathered all their wits and acumen to pull the nation out of this morass but more importantly, lifted the sagging morale of the disillusioned populace. And pray, whose legacy was this ‘grave’ pre-1991 crisis? The grandiose populist and socialist policies of Nehru, Indira and Rajiv, all Rahul’s bloodlines, wrought over four decades straight of direct majority rule. And it is into that horror past that Rahul with his ‘reset’ button wants to throwback the nation into. Do not the words License Raj, crony capitalism, Bombay club etc send familiar shivers down our spines? Or how the Public Sector, supposed commanding heights of the Indian economy plunged to demanding depths owing to rampant unionism, pillage by the ruling elite and rank incompetence?
Cut to the present. Rahul Gandhi has from out of the blue pulled out a notional figure of Rs 16 lakh crores that the Modi regime according to him had given as tax cuts to 22 corporates, an equally mythical number. And based on this profound discovery, he has produced a shopping list of how he would use this money. The list contains several options all from that same Rs16 lakh crores, but never mind such typical Rahulisms. His entire stress is now on the idea of redistribution of this ‘stolen’ wealth. And where is this stacked up? No clues, so forget it!
But he however looked certain of the destination, at first at least: An X-ray of the nation would be done and then the target audience identified. Yet, before the vaunted X-ray results, he has already arrived at another mystical figure of 90% of the populace who will benefit. And when quizzed on how the whopping Rs 16 lakh crores would be ‘redistributed’, he said he meant only small parts, not full and that calculations are on, Almighty knows what. But may we ask, who decides and divides the poor from the rich? Oh, wait, All India Confusion Committee is working out the math.
The fabled Robin Hood robbed prosperous Peter to pay poor Paul. Our neo Robin Hood will loot for sure. But the payback or rather, kick back is for his ilk alone. Really, Rahul is a constant challenge to one’s credulity and common sense, and best ignored. But he runs the national party that ruined the nation with his nasty dynasty ruling the roost. And so, when he links this redistribution rhetoric to an oncoming revolution, one has perforce to sit up.
Having ceded and conceded all the caste cards in its deck to the likes of Laloo, Mulayam, Mayawati, Ramadoss at all, set off by the ultimate Mandal inside job of ‘Weepy’ Singh, who have all beaten the Congress at its own patented game long back, a desperate Rahul has fallen on the worst ideology that the world has witnessed in recent centuries: Redistribution as in class distinctions and revolution as a way of achieving it. This I see as the most dangerous and insidious game plan of a desperate party and its desolate leader. In upping this long-fallen ante, Rahul is trying to be more Left than the left-out Leftists. If his redistribution brain wave is an arithmetic abomination, resurrecting the revolution rhetoric rakes up many forgettable historic nightmares.
The Congress manifesto is a recycled debris of the Communist manifesto. World over a dead Marxism is trying and vying to dig up its lost relevance through vile ways, but this is a big topic. Suffice to say that the toxic ideology is seeking to find favour in academia and media, its original forte, and through pliable politicos across the spectrum. And ‘reset’ is the universal verbal vehicle, the current currency, for this fatal fad. Ignoramuses like Rahul lend themselves as easy and vulnerable fronts and proxies. But what does history say?
Post Hitler global order, or disorder had thrown up some of the worst dictators, demigods, demagogues and democidal mass murderers like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceausescu and sundry iron curtain villains. And all of them had the red flag on their ‘Left’ ‘Hand’, guns on their right, revolution on their lips and peddled delusionary visions produced by their idle minds called devil’s workshop. Of course, such portents and possibility are beyond the pale of pedestrian Rahul, who’s writ does not even run in INDIA, let alone India. Still, the script is incendiary, the revelation telling. The ‘Reset’ is a deadly giveaway that brings to life past economic ghosts.
Congress is notorious for trampling on even freedom vintage veterans. Rajaji, Kamaraj, Morarji, and later Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesari were all unceremoniously dumped. And Manmohan is the latest. Rahul had already once played a sick joke on the gentle Sardar by tearing up an ordinance in full public glare. Now he is seeking to set the economic clock back decades by jettisoning Manmohanomics, the man’s life and purpose, that also served the nation well.
An unkindest cut indeed, from a person who has no earthy and worthy notions of economics or politics to a celebrated genius whose only crime was to lend his superior intellect and hard-earned credibility to the worst first family of modern times. May be Manmohan is paying for willy nilly misinterpreting the Constitution which says “ … the Prime Minister and his council of ministers shall hold office at the pleasure of the President’, as Congress president instead!
When asked recently how history will judge him, Manmohan had only a wry smile to offer. We now know what his prime beneficiary had in offer for him all along. The Congress manifesto is the manifestation of that!
