Socialist shame in the people’s name

That makes no economic sense but politically it makes even less sense when you consider that the statement came in the week when there were more reports of starvation deaths from Rajasthan. Should a ‘‘socialist’’ party not be more worried about ‘‘the people’’ than about a business decision? Would that self-appointed champion of the poor, George Fernandes, like to tell us how many Samata Party workers he has sent to the districts in which more than 60 people are reported to have died?

With Central Government warehouses bursting with three times more food stocks than we need—even in a dire emergency—it is sickening that children should be dying of hunger a few hundred kilometres from New Delhi. Sickening that despite proof that desperately poor people in Rajasthani villages have been eating grass instead of food for weeks local officials continue to deny that people are dying of hunger. A newspaper last week reported the following comment from the ADM (Additional District Magistrate) of Shabad, Shanker Lal Bunker: ‘‘Even if you don’t eat for 12 days, you won’t die of starvation but of dehydration’’. How sick can our officials get?

More importantly, where are those politicians who claim to speak exclusively for the people? Should Fernandes, who is not just an important minister in the Vajpayee government but the Convener of the National Democratic Alliance, not be making more noise about starvation deaths than public sector companies? He should but with the Indian socialist — whether Nehruvian, Georgian or Mulayamian — hypocrisy is ever the leitmotif. Since it was the Nehruvian kind who were longest in power they have done the most damage. So, despite Nehru’s daughter dedicating herself to socialism to the extent of writing it into the Constitution (during the Emergency) neither she nor Daddy Dearest did anything to provide the poor with the tools to lift themselves out of their poverty.

India must be the only socialist country in the world that paid only negligible attention to such vital things as mass literacy and mass healthcare. Despite Murli Manohar Joshi’s idle boasts about dramatic increases in literacy rates, India continues to have the largest population of illiterate people on the planet. And, even those who manage somehow to learn how to read and write do not have access to anything resembling a modern education. Not only do village schools go without such basic necessities as roofs and walls, but schools in Delhi and Mumbai fare only marginally better. A recent TV report on Delhi schools showed children studying in classrooms that were tin sheds without proper floors. Do you hear our socialist leaders express outrage at this?

Do you ever hear them mention the appaling healthcare that 50 years of socialism have bequeathed those who cannot afford private hospitals? Conditions in government hospitals are so atrocious that the sight of stray dogs wandering around the wards is not unusual nor is the sight of seriously ill patients lying on bloodstained sheets on the floor. This is in our towns and cities. In the villages there is no healthcare to speak of and ‘‘the people’’, even the poorest of them, are forced to pay for private medical care even if it comes from quacks and semi-trained medical practitioners. And, the socialists worry about disinvestment.

We have wasted more than Rs 200,000 crore on public sector companies that give us only a negligible return on our investment and the socialists would have us waste even more in the name of socialism. Parties like Samata would have government hang on to hotels that make huge losses and factories that make second-rate consumer goods and for taking this position they provide reasons that range from the ludicrous to the bizarre. National security is threatened, they tell us, if petrol pumps go into the hands of private investors. Really? Or could it be because privatising government oil companies will mean that there are no more petrol pumps left to hand out to friends and relatives?

Could it be that the only reason why they cling so desperately to ‘‘socialism’’ is because it is the best political system for those whose reason for being in public life is to live off the fat of the land? The least they can do is stop speaking for ‘‘the people’’ because the people are starving to death while our socialist fat cats worry about the next business deal. If this is socialism, it really is time to rid ourselves of it.

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