Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
“Satan never errs”. So also our Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh.
His Independence Day speech on August 15, 2013 is so full of self-glorification that even the Satan will not dare to vie.
To keep the Sonia Gandhi family pleased, he did not mention the names of the former Prime Ministers who did not belong to the personal heirdom of the maternal grand father of her husband. Now being criticized for soft stance shown to Pakistan despite her repeated offense against our men on the LoC, he has not shown the curtesy of remembering the two Prime Ministers – Lal Bahadur Sastry and Atal Bihari Vajpayee – under whose leadership India had vanquished the the American stooge at the border that had attacked us in 1965 at Kutch Peninsula and in 1999 at Kargil respectively.
We may come to this issue some other day; but for now, subject of our discussion would be his claim of credit for development of India in his speech on the independence day.
He has used ‘decade’ as a yardstick to measure post-independence development of India. And, has declared that except the decade under his rule, economic development of India has “increased” so spectacularly “in no other decade”.
He credited the first two decades – the 1950s and 1960s – of developments to Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru; the seventies to Indira Gandhi; the eighties to Rajiv Gandhi, and the nineties to Narasingh Rao under whom, according to him, he being the Finance Minister, economic reform commenced to usher in the new phase of development that has been ever since increasing to higher altitudes.
But the decade begun from 2004, the year that handed him over the reign, has registered the highest rate of increase in development; a development which neither Nehru, nor Indira, nor Rajiv, nor Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister had been able to bring in. “In no other decade has our economic development increased as much as in this decade”, he has told the country.
When increase in suicides of farmers, increase in starvation deaths, increase in body selling by nubile girls, increase in baby selling by mothers and fathers under insurmountable condition of pernicious penury is the reality that scornfully defines the decade under Manmohan Singh,his assertions from the rampart of the Red Fort on August 15, that, “In no decade has our economic development increased as much as in this decade” appears exactly as the Satan’s bragging that his regime is the best, because he never errs.
When increase in economic offenses known by the syndrome called corruption, increase in instances of denudation of the national exchequer by his colleagues by way of corruption, increase in instances of audit-unveiled mega scams, increase in the density of the clouds of economic misconduct shrouding over more and more of his colleagues, increase in crime against the country by the Indian lobbyists of the economic empires of the Americans sic passim the decade under his administration is overwhelming India, his assertions from the rampart of the Red Fort on August 15, that, “In no decade has our economic development increased as much as in this decade” appears exactly as the Satan’s bragging that his regime is the best, because he never errs.
When “economic misery is rising in India” which would “hurt the poorer segments of the society much more than the wealthy” according to the latest study by Nomura Financial Advisory and Securities (India) Pvt. Ltd, increase in Consumer Price Index, according to the Government’s own Labour Bureau, has risen to 231 from 100 in 2001 for industrial workers whereas for agricultural and rural laborers, from the last base of 100, it has increased to 729 and 730 respectively. This is indicative of how the maximum majority of Indians – the industrial workers, the agricultural laborers and the rural laborers – are increasingly being exploited by the private owners of means of productions and economically ruined by hoarders, black-marketeers, and profiteers in Manmohan Singh’s regime. He has, under his anti-people economic policy and gang of exterminators of India’s constitutional resolve for equality and socialism, so severely damaged the economic backbone of our people that their irrecoverably ruined purchasing power does not allow them even to purchase the rice so badly essential even to live in a condition of slow starvation. Lest the country rise in revolt and lest the world wake up to the tragedy of mass death that his treachery against the people would certainly precipitate, he has been ruining the national exchequer in giving the people below pverty line rice at Rs.2 a kg (which in Orissa has become R.1/-) with no scheme to stop the subsidy by increasing the purchasing power of the people. When no greater misfortune has ever overwhelmed India, his assertions from the rampart of the Red Fort on August 15, that, “In no decade has our economic development increased as much as in this decade” appears exactly as the Satan’s bragging that his regime is the best, because he never errs.
The UNICEF reports that 20% of India’s children below five years of age suffer from wasting due to acute undernourishment, constituting one-third of the entire world’s wasted children. It further shows that 43% of our under 5 children are underweight and 48% are stunted due to chronic undernourishment. Shamefully, India accounts for more than three out of every ten stunted children of the world. When this is the picture of the decade under the rule of Dr. Singh, his assertions from the rampart of the Red Fort on August 15, that, “In no decade has our economic development increased as much as in this decade” appears exactly as the Satan’s bragging that his regime is the best, because he never errs.
He has claimed credit for routine developments like laying of roads, establishment of techno-education institutes, increase in industries and the likes, when these are normal activities of the executive. Had there been no Manmohan Singh in the prime minister’s chair, these routine works could have been normally executed in course of administration.
In a democracy, political government is temporary, but the executive government is permanent. And hence, planning for and execution of utilities meant for the benefit of the people is vested in the employees of the State, not in the political leadership.
Political leadership has only one responsibility. And, that is, promulgation of a political economy which should eliminate economic contradictions amongst the people of the country and ensure that the value of their money does not go down in international market, so that the country continues its upward journey unhindered. Manmohan Singh has blatantly failed. More dangerously, he has rendered Indian national resolve for making the country prosper on the basis of political economy of socialism inconsequential by subjecting us to GATT and other American machinations, as it was not possible to cause any amendment to the Preamble of the Constitution of India to do away with the resolve to make India a Socialist Republic. And the American pattern of capitalism he has forced us into, has destroyed the mana of Indian National Rupee in the international arena. In the decade under his regime, the value of our money has constantly declined in front of American Dollar that has multiplied the plight of our people, whose indigenous market has also been rendered subservient to impact of US Dollar and FDI in retail trade.
When Singh was delivering his speech on August 15, 2013, for one US Dollar, Indians were being forced to pay 62.500 INR. But when he grabbed the chair in 2004, the value of 1 USD was 45.2603 INR in the annual average. And, through out the decade under his grip, we have been forced to suffer the ignominy of having a rupee of increasingly more devastative devaluation against the American Dollar. When this sordid reality hurts us unabated and constantly in the regime of Dr. Singh, his assertions from the rampart of the Red Fort on August 15, that, “In no decade has our economic development increased as much as in this decade” appears exactly as the Satan’s bragging that his regime is the best, because he never errs.
Mother India, I am sorry, you are to suffer, till at least this regime of subterfuge ends and your constitutional resolve for socialism returns.