The SBP manifesto starts with law and order. The SBP would repeal all amendments to the Constitution, and restore it to its state on January 26, 1948. It would repeal all laws which serve no purpose, which harass honest citizens or help criminals. All regulations relating to production licensing, restrictions on holding, lease, hire and renting, controls on trade, exports and imports would be abrogated on a Zero Regulation Day. The remaining laws would be cleaned up and published on December 1, every year in four volumes civil, criminal, economic and social and become effective on the next New Years day for a year. All case law would be computerised. In this way, law would be simplified; and it would be possible for everyone to know what the law is. (In case this sounds utopian, the laws of the US federal government are actually available in one set of printed volumes revised once a year; they fill about three shelves.) The control of the police would be devolved on local authorities. The police would be
made to concentrate initially on eradicating gangsterism, terrorism and bellicose fundamentalism; other work can take a back seat until serious crime is brought down.
The BJP has three pages on security, but it is obsessed with external threats. It would induct nuclear weapons, develop longer-range missiles, bring in drones and air-to-air refuelling of fighters, and strengthen our spying apparatus abroad. It would raise the pay and perquisites of the armed forces. It would fence the borders, catch illegal infiltrators and send them back to - er - Bangladesh; I do not think the BJP means Nepal. It would improve surface and air transport links with the north-east, prevent defalcation of development funds, generate electricity there, and beef up security to prevent illegal migration from I suppose Bangladesh, and smuggling. On internal security properly defined, the BJP would beef up the equipment of the police, rationalize paramilitary forces, hold district officers responsible for disorders, and launch drives against terrorists, extremists, possessors of illicit arms, and narcotics smugglers.
Coming to electoral reform, the BJP would update and adopt the Goswami Committee report, whatever that might be. It would give voters identity cards, make the government pay recognised parties election expenses, redefine constituencies, and make parties audit their accounts. It would examine the feasibility of introducing the list system or a mixed system of elections. The SBP has no patience with such dilly-dallying; it would abolish the first-past-the-post system of election, which works in favour of the largest single minority, as well as reservations, which brand the community given reservations. Instead, it would introduce proportional representation (i.e, the list system). It believes that state funding of elections would be worse than the disease it would try to cure; instead the SBP aims to reduce election expenditure. Only propaganda by spoken or written word would be allowed in elections.
Coming to economic reforms, the SBP would reduce taxes, which it regards as an instrument of tyrannizing and blackmailing the people, especially the opposition. Taxes would not be based on the assessees accounts; they would be based on bases that are physically verifiable, transparent and non-discretionary, such as installed capacity, rolling stock or residential area occupied. A part of the revenue would go to the maintenance of law and order and security. The assessee would be able to specify where the rest of his tax payments should go to hospitals, schools etc. Deficit financing by both the Centre and the states would be banned, and the government would be run with utmost frugality. Institutions of justice, intellect (read schools and colleges), piety (read religious institutions) would be freed from government control, monitoring and subversion, and would be allowed to raise their own resources. But the markets particularly the trends in profits, wages, rent and interest would be
monitored in consumers interest.
The BJPs chapter on economic reforms is as long as the SBPs entire manifesto. The first quarter of this sprawling agenda is devoted to abusing past governments and lamenting the state of the economy the BJP hopes to inherit. Then comes the partys view of liberalism: ... the greater the liberalization, the more demanding is the involvement of the Government to protect national industry and employment. Then it applies Desais law: that every folly has a precedent in a Good Country. Every country advocates free trade ..., but, in practice, they [sic] compulsively resort to quotas, tariffs and anti-dumping measures... Ergo, the BJP too would resort to them. Even developed nations like France, Germany and Switzerland have restrictions on the takeover of domestic companies. Apply Desais law to this pseudo-fact, and you get restrictions on foreign direct investment. It would be allowed to come in priority areas, infrastructure and export industries. It would come by invitation from Indian industrialists, and not in
100 per cent subsidiaries. The BJP would restore the sovereign and inalienable right of the government to choose its (i e the countrys) economic system as well as its legal, social, cultural and political system in accordance with its historic (sic) traditions, national genius and the express will of its people, which the Congress government meekly surrendered by accepting the highly prejudicial WTO conditionalities.
So much for xenophobia. And how about domestic liberalisation? Level playing field? Non-intervention? A development bank for unincorporated enterprises will be considered. Their owners would be covered by a social safety net. Their contributions to temples, mosques and gurdwaras where free food is provided to the poor would be made tax-deductible. Government agencies would be set up to give small firms raw materials, better technology, and marketing assistance. The SSI limit of Rs 3 crore would be brought down if any misuse of the higher limit is found. New nuclear power stations would be built presumably by the government. The government would maximize returns from the companies that it already owns (India Telecom [BJPs new name for the Department of Telecom], VSNL, MTNL, ITI) and the consumer be damned.
From this and more that must remain uncriticised I would conclude that the SBP supremo, Sharad Joshi, is sometimes crazy but seldom mixed-up. The BJP, on the other hand, resolves ideological dilemmas by semantic legerdemain. When faced with its communalism, it makes up a private definition which makes itself secular and others pseudo-secular. When faced with the shift in public thinking towards liberalism, it clothes the illiberal policies it prefers with the mantle of liberalism. Such terminological sleight-of-hand may have some utility in propaganda. But as far as thinking things through is concerned, it is an insuperable handicap.
