For too long before and after independance, Indian politics, public and intellectual discourse has been dominated by leftist thinking. Socialism, Fabianism, Nehruvianism, Stalinism, Marxism were the dominant ideologies on which government policy, social and economic, was based. There is a widely accepted view that these utopian, impractical, outdated, obscurantist and fraudulent ideologies have largely failed India. The evidence is there to see in the poverty levels that existed before 1991, when India broke out of its self imposed socialist shackles and decided to give its citizens more economic freedom by pursuing a liberal economic policy, and the rate at which it has declined post 1991.

However, economic reforms are still viewed as a great evil, especially in constituencies dominated by the pseudo leftist or left leaning Congress party, the pucca leftist CPI(Marxist) and other parties with leftist leanings. These parties thrive because of the numerous falsehoods that are spread deliberately by them and their counterparts in the intelligentsia via fabrication, sophistry, outright lies and sensationalist statements to the media. The common man, especially the uneducated one, falls too easily for these and continues to vote for these parties, which have anything except India’s real development on their agendas once they come to power.

There are a number of people in India who believe in the power of a liberal economy, its ability to bring people out of poverty and take the nation down the path of progress. Whatever measly reforms the Indian government has taken post 1991 have yielded net gains. They have generally increased the standard of life of the common man, rescued hundreds of millions from poverty and unleashed a mean economic machine that now threatens to compete with the best of the world. Why then do people still vote for parties which do not favour these reforms and spend considerable pastime in criticizing them, giving us nightmares of a possible return to the old socialist days during which economic intolerance was considered progressive.

It is because of the absence of a distinctively rightist, secular, libertarian national party which can equal the other national parties, the Congress and the BJP, in size and influence. This absence, in fact, is really surprising. You would expect that with the kind of gains that India made through economic reforms, there would exist a strong voice (there are very few today and only three in the UPA) that is proreform in India’s polity. The BJP promised to be that party, the party with a difference, the party which would espouse rightist economic policy among other things. It seemed that the long awaited right-of-centre party had finally arrived.

Though it was reform friendly during the five years of its rule at the centre in the NDA, the BJP couldnt make too many gains, the sort of gains that every rightist was expecting it to make. The BJP has too many controversies around its neck and too many groups dragging it in different directions. It had to cut short its economic reform agenda because of heavy criticism from the RSS. This way, it missed many reform opportunities. On the social and political front, it did not pursue what it promised to. Its main agendas, the Uniform Civil Code, Art. 370 etc. were never pursued. As expected, a frustrated electorate kicked it out of power in 2004 and transferred power into the hitherto hated Congress and the ragbag bunch of political friends that make the UPA.

Today, the BJP comes across as a confused party with no firm leadership and no focussed agenda. It came to power in Punjab with a practical agenda, based on good governance rather than Hindutva. Just a few months later, one of its members was caught circulating a CD allegedly containing not so pleasant references to Muslims. This shows that there is a lack of focussed agenda. Even considering that some of the contents of the CD are true, the BJP still deserves the harsh criticism that it got for resorting to such cheap tactics. The BJP is in a state of crisis. Even if it would have a strong leadership, it would still be burdened by its links to RSS and will not be able to pursue its agenda freely. In any case, the BJP is not supported by all rightists because it is perceived to be a communal party, “diving the country on religious lines for votes” as they say.

What is needed is party with more difference. A party which is truly rightist – an unflinching supporter of liberal economic reforms, economic freedom, consumer rights and consumer benefit, over the benefit of MPs, bureaucrats and other interest groups. A party which is secular in the true sense of the word – one which avoids the fraud that has been pursued in the name of secularism and minority rights by the “secular” parties of today, one which seeks to make India secular both on paper and in practice (today’s India is secular on paper and multireligious and favouritist in practice) by strict separation of state and religion. A party which is libertarian – one which would espouse individual freedom in the true sense, one which would avoid bans at the drop of a hat both to please itself and please the minorities, one which would understand that society, culture and religion are not the state’s business.

We had only one party that comes close – the Swatantra Party. However, it couldnt make much headway. Who’s next?

Further reading:

1. Amit Varma laments that it is frustrating being a libertarian in India. “Where’s the Freedom Party?“, he asks.

2. Nitin Pai argues in Waiting for the Free Market Mahatma that India needs someone who can popularise the free market among India’s masses, by cogent articulation of its benefits, making the analogy of Mahatma Gandhi who realized that real power lay in the masses and popularised the freedom struggle among them. He asks:

If Gandhi could crystallize the idea of political freedom and simplify its practice, then surely, the same could be done for the idea of economic freedom. But with many parts of India suffering from a socialist hangover (and indeed renewal) can it find one in time?

3. Jaithirth Rao says in Tired of Socialists that even though the Swatantra Party did not win many votes and did not win elections, it did have a considerable impact on the public discourse over economic freedom during those times. He says:

Even if it is not a formal party, only a society, it is important that the argument for economic and political freedoms (which are intertwined) must be made loudly, clearly and cogently.

4. Most recently, Tavleen Singh argues in Such a dismal front that:

These ideas will get the support of voters if they can be certain that their lives will improve. But, to articulate this total shift away from the policies we have followed so far we need a new political party. A post-modern version of the old Swatantra Party if you will. A party that will have the courage to admit why our socialist policies have failed and articulate what needs to be done for ordinary Indians to share the benefits of an economy that is supposedly the second fastest growing economy in the world.

What we do not need is a revival of a Third Front that stands for the very socialist ideas that we should have junked long ago.