The Indian Reunification Association (See our website indianreunificationassociation.weebly.com and in particular our Mission Statement) aims not just at formal reunification of India but also at a reunified India in which all its citizens have decent lives and enjoy a high standard of living. We must have a reunified India in which all its citizens get employment with high incomes, nutritious food, healthcare, good education, etc. All that will cost a lot of money. How is it to be achieved? That is what will be explained in this Address.
The Industrial Revolution, which began in England in the 18th century and then spread all over the world, has created a unique situation in world history, that now no one need be poor and everyone can have a high standard of living.
Earlier, in feudal times, the methods of production were so backward and primitive that very little wealth could be generated by the same. Hence in the feudal era only a handful of people (kings, aristocrats etc.) could be rich, and the rest of the people had to be poor.
This situation has drastically changed after the Industrial Revolution. Now modern industry is so powerful and so big that enough wealth can be generated to give everyone a decent life and a high standard of living.
So to give the citizens of reunified India a high standard of living we must have a high level of industrialisation. How is that to be achieved?
Setting up modern largescale industry requires 3 essentials (1) a huge pool of technical talent (2) huge natural resources, and (3) a huge market.
Today we have the first two, but not the third.
India of today is not the India of 1947. In 1947 we had very few industries and very few engineers, since the British policy was broadly to keep India unindustrialised, backward and feudal. This situation has changed since then, and now we have thousands of bright engineers, technicians and scientists. Our IT engineers are largely manning Silicon Valley in California, and Indian Professors abound in American and European Universities in their science, mathematics and engineering departments.
We have immense natural resources, since India is not just a small country like England or Japan, but is a subcontinent.
However, the problem in industrialising India is lack of the third factor viz a huge market. No doubt we have a huge population, but most of our people are poor and so do not have much purchasing power. After all, the goods produced by industry must be sold. So the problem is not how to increase production (that we can easily do since we have the first two essentials for industrialisation) but how to raise the purchasing power of our masses.
In the imperialist era markets were captured by armed force e.g. the British conquest of India or the French conquest of Algeria and Vietnam. But the era of direct imperialism is over.
Acquiring foreign markets is difficult, since they are already saturated e.g. by domestic or Chinese goods.
So the only recourse left for us is to convert our huge population into a huge market, which means raising the purchasing power of our masses. How is that to be done?
In the Soviet Union after the policy of rapid industrialisation was adopted in 1928 the broad methodology which was followed was this: prices of commodities were fixed by the government, and these were regularly reduced every two years or so by 5-10% (and sometimes wages raised by 5-10%). This way the real wages of workers went up, (since real wage is relative to the prices) and hence the people could buy more goods. Thus by state action (and not laissez faire) the people’s purchasing power was increased.
Simultaneously, industrialisation was rapidly stepped up, and the goods manufactured could be sold ( as the people’s purchasing power had gone up).
At a time when the Great Depression was going on in the world (following the Wall Street Slump of 1928) and one out of every three worker in the USA was unemployed, the Soviet economy was rapidly growing and millions of jobs created in Russia.
I am not saying that we must necessarily follow the method adopted in Soviet Russia. We can devise our own method of raising the purchasing power of the masses, but unless that is done we can never industrialise on a large scale, and can therefore never eliminate poverty, unemployment and other social evils.
I make it clear that I am not against private enterprise. But I am certainly against the crony capitalism practised in India which has resulted in 7 Indians, who bribed politicians and bureaucrats, owning more wealth than the bottom 50% of India’s 1320 million population.
Rapid industrialisation of India is possible only under strong patriotic political leaders who are determined to rapidly industrialise the country. Under the present system of parliamentary democracy that is not possible, as our political leaders are only interested in winning the next elections, and have no interest in rapid industrialisation. In fact Indian parliamentary democracy runs largely on caste and communal vote banks. Casteism and communalism are feudal forces which must be destroyed if India is to progress, but parliamentary democracy further entrenches them. China has no parliamentary democracy and so has progressed rapidly, while we are still embroiled in Ram Mandir and cow protection issues. So reunified India will not have parliamentary democracy but some other system under which India rapidly industrialises (see my article ‘Parliamentary democracy has failed’ in the portal DailyO.in).
The reunified India will strongly support science and scientific thinking. While supporting religious freedom, it will suppress religious extremism or bigotry, whether Hindu, Muslim or Sikh, and crush it with an iron hand. It will not tolerate discrimination against minorities, dalits or women.
In particular, it will repeal all laws against cow slaughter or beef eating. This may antagonise many Hindus, but so be it. We are not in a popularity contest.
It will abolish the outdated sharia law, and enact a common civil code for all communities. This may antagonise many Muslims, but so be it. We are not in a popularity contest.
Reunified India will have a huge market for the products of our modern large scale industry, and will have huge natural resources. The huge amount we currently spend on purchasing weapons from foreign countries will be spent on the welfare of our people and giving them decent lives.