The speech by the Indian Prime Minister at a function in Oxford told us much about him. About his economics, his politics and his understanding of Swaraj.

We already knew that he was for globalization; that he was first an economist and then a politician. And here I use a complimentary connotation of a politician – an individual committed to understanding, designing and implementing policies for the good of people.

The Prime Minister said:
“There is no doubt that our grievance against the British Empire had a sound basis. As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6 per cent in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3 per cent at that time, to as low as 3.8 per cent in 1952.”

But our grievances against the British did not begin with India’s share in the world income. It began with laws that took away the access of the common citizen to our own resources, our mines, our forests, our pastures and our lakes, and that disempowered the common citizen. It began with complete disruption of local economies and distribution processes that were necessary for British Rule.

Our grievances include human rights violations at a scale that Britain refuses to acknowledge. Millions killed by constructed famines. Millions of weavers maimed to destroy local cotton economies. Millions of tribal communities destroyed to end local mining economies. Millions of artisans destroyed to destroy the sustenance of rural India. All so that British companies had an easier playground to effectively compete.

Perhaps this is no different from current policies in the finance sector (regarding interest rates and bank responsibilities for social investment), in the agricultural sector (deregulation of seed policies) or in the energy sector (where services are dismembered and foreign companies are allowed to invest in the profitable sectors) where these laws are changed so that multinationals can profit while hundreds of millions in India are losing their livelihoods. It is no different where the government trusts Enron more than it trusts many of its own people who present data that shows that we were being taken for a ride.

Our grievances included a government that was completely non-transparent with the people. Where oppressive policies of the British depended on the complete absence of transparency.

Unfortunately, our beloved Prime Minister cannot present such a critique since these policies continue to be extant six decades after Independence. Independence, not Swaraj. For we have not attained Swaraj.

While Dr. Manmohan Singh lavishly quotes Gandhiji, his understanding of Gandhiji is at best superficial. Gandhiji wanted the end of British rule so that we could have Swaraj - Self Rule. In his book, Hind Swaraj, Gandhiji specifically says that Swaraj did not mean a state where a bunch of brown skinned people would take over the system run by the white skinned rulers but a state where people ruled themselves.

For the establishment of such Self Rule, Dr. Singh perhaps has not read, Gandhiji argued that people must have access to these resources that are necessary for our livelihoods, for our sustenance. While the state owns mines and leases it out to whosoever it will, and tribal communities are thrown out of their lands and into slums that will be destroyed tomorrow, we do not have Self Rule. While people in Plachimada are thirsty, and as they lose their livelihoods as one multinational makes millions, we do not have Self Rule.

We do not have self rule where 600 million farmers are still disempowered to the extent that they cannot sustain their livelihoods 6 decades after independence, where Amartya Sen suggests that the calories that a farmer has access to today is less than during the Bengal famine. We do not have self rule where over 15000 farmers commit suicide every year as per official records.

We do not have Self Rule where the government is still unwilling to become transparent and the small concessions that have been won over a decade of the Right to Information campaign have come despite the political leadership.

Karl Polanyi lamented that while economics was embedded in society, today society is embedded in economics. Our Prime Minister is the epitome of that lament. Perhaps if he put down his economics filter for a little bit, the cries of pain of most the Indian population – the population that rejected the India Shining campaign – might register beyond the effusive joy of the bump in our GDP.

Dr. Singh would find it useful to note that our grievances against the British were not tied to our GDP, nor do our grievances end with a growing GDP. While the may be one useful index, he would be much better served in being the Prime Minister of India if he were to listen to the state of 600 million farmers. If they cannot find a voice in our democracy, Mr. Prime Minister, there is no Self Rule.
- Sanat Mohanty

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