Articles
Our Right To Spend: Your Duty To Fund
Dt:17/2/20
Our Right To Spend: Your Duty To Fund
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
There is a specter sweeping across the states in India . Those which are ruled by the regional parties are competitively launching more and more and costlier “welfare” schemes. Many of these states are running deficit budgets and are deep in debt. For example, Tamilnadu which has a debt of about Rs. 4,50,000 crores presented a budget with a deficit of Rs. 40,000 crores for 2020-21. They talk of the “federal” nature of our Republic. That India is federal is pure imagination because nowhere in the Constitution is the word federation used. India is a Union of States. Regarding laws and powers the constitution mentions a Union list, a State list and concurrent list and in regard to concurrent list, on any subject the Union law prevails over the state law. Further Articles - 352 , 356 and 360 clearly spell that the Union is supreme for, under these three articles, emergency could be declared and the Union assumes powers to administer the states. Federation supposes that federating units / states surrender their sovereignty and delegate certain functions to the federal state. Before our Constitution came into force (26 Jan 1950), there were Provinces of the British -ruled India and native States ruled by Rajas, Maharajas and Nawabs all under the paramountcy of Great Britain . With the Constitution coming into force, over a period of time the entire territory of the Republic of India has been reorganized into States and Union Territories . The Union can create new states (eg: Telangana) and Union Territories ( eg. Laddakh). Therefore it is shear demagogy on the part of the regional parties to talk of a federal structure of the Indian Republic. The Republic is a Union and it cannot be broken up, with any part seceding from the Union. It may be recalled that Abraham Lincoln, President of the USA risked a six year -long bloody civil war in order to prevent some southern states from seceding from the USA.
2. With the decline of the Indian National Congress as it came to be proprietarised by the Nehru dynasty ( Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and now rotating between the mother Sonia and the daughter Priyanka), regional parties have been becoming stronger and stronger and the Congress party is having nil or insignificant number of legislators in many states - Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, UP, Bihar , Bengal , Orissa, Telangana, Tamilnadu, Tripura, West Bengal, Sikkim ….
3. The Republic of India started as a development state with a series of Five Year Plans to promote industries, agriculture and commerce and trade; education and research institutes. With the ascent of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister, India started becoming a welfare state. It was much more so when the Sonia - led Congress was the leading party in the Untied Progressive Association (UPA)’s rule between 2004 and 2014. Indiraji initiated this welfare state with the deadly slogan garibi hatao. The garibs are now 75% of rural population and 67% of urban population, given food security through public distribution system (PDS) with white ration cards. In A.P and Telangana, the white ration cards have 80% of the population on rolls! Even today it is the garibs who are being wooed competitively by all the parties. The usually conservative Bharatiya Janata Party also is having to launch its owns programs of poverty elimination (eg: antyodaya ). Tamilnadu and Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have become leaders in transforming the welfare states into charity states And whole India is gradually becoming a charity state. In Tamilnadu, the Congress has lost power in 1967 itself. The competition is between two regional parties, the DMK and the AIDMK. The charity started with Rs. 1 kg rice being given to the poor and over time, TV sets, grinders, mixers, cellphones, bicycles, washing machines, laptops, clothes and festival gifts of increasing value came to be distributed free . In Andhra Pradesh , the ever innovative Chandra Babu Naidu took the welfare give -aways to another level - he put cash into the bank accounts of over 80 lakh DWACRA women, distributed implements to persons in traditional professions (by caste) like washer- men, toddy tappers, barbers, potters, fishermen and enhanced amounts for the building of churches and pilgrimages to Jerusalem ; built Haj Houses and donated government money for the tabligh movement ( conversion of Hindus to Islam) . He also gave ownership titles to those who have illegally occupied government sites in cities for building “houses” in place of huts . In order to defeat the charity king , Chandra Babu Naidu and his party, his rival, leader of the another regional party YSRCP upped the ante through what he called Navaratnas, a set of nine give -aways by outbidding Chandra Babu Naidu. His party won 151 seats out of 175 in the 2019 election to A.P legislature and 22 MPs out of 25 for the Lok Sabha. Immediately, he has been distributing on assumption of power , staggering amounts : for over 80,000 weavers he credited into bank a/cs Rs. 24,000 each with the promise that similar amounts will be credited during his 5 year tenure ; Rs. 15,000 to every mother who sends her children to a school ; Rs. 12,000 to every three wheeler auto owner; enhanced pensions by 50% to over 50 lakhs of social welfare pensioners ( widows, single women, sr .citizens, physically disabled ); for women of certain castes social welfare pensions are given for persons of 45 years and above; 25 lakh poor persons will be given house sites by acquiring private lands ; pastors in Churches (about 50,000 of them in the state) will be paid monthly salaries; like imams and muezzins; who started receiving salaries from Naidu government; five lakh unemployed young had been appointed as Gram Sevaks at Rs . 5000 per month. In the neighbouring state, Telangana, more or less all these schemes plus sheep, goats and milk buffalos are given; tens of thousands of 2BHK ( 2 bed rooms, one hall and kitchen) houses are built to be allotted to the poor, white ration cards are being freely given . Distribution of white ration cards and houses for the poor are scandalous - in AP for a population of about 5 cr, there are more than 1 cr 40 lakh white ration cards . The population on the basis of the white ration cards is more than 5 cr. The government in Andhra Pradesh has been asserting that about 15-20 lakh houses were built for the poor and now many more than that are planned to be built by the new government . In fact, since 1956 in the two Telugu states of A.P and Telangana , if all the figures are added, more than 2 cr houses for the poor are claimed to have been built by now. That means about 8 cr people in the two states with population of about 9 cr must be living in government built houses for the poor! They are not there. Another racket is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme. The beneficiaries enlisted are a few crores . They have hardly any work. Much money is being shared between government servants, legislators and the poor .
4. In the two Telugu states, in the last five years the government debt has crossed what all the accumulated debt was between 1956 and 2014. It is now about two and half times what it was in 2014. And they are borrowing and borrowing. The Government of Andhra Pradesh has withheld payment of about Rs. 40 000 cr to contractors and suppliers bills submitted during the TDP government ; that is, before May 2019. In order to raise money for distribution, new state-owned corporations are being created ; they raise loans from banks with guarantees from the government ; they don’t spend the monies for the stated purpose of the corporations but park that money with the government. And government is distributing that money as charity it has promised.
5. While the charity nature of the governments in AP and Telangana is described here in detail , governments in other states are not lagging far behind . The regional party governments in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are hell-bent on getting the votes of minorities. AAP government in Delhi has recently announced that the Imams and muezzins in Delhi’s 1500 mosques will be paid enhanced salaries. Article: 27 of the Constitution says that State shall not levy any tax for the purpose of benefitting any particular religion. But the subsidies given for the Haj pilgrimage to Muslims and Jerusalem pilgrimage of Christians , monies given for the construction of Churches and Haj houses and salaries to Imams, Muezzins and Pastors are from the general budget , some through minority welfare departments. Most conspicuously and regrettably , priests in Hindus’ temples are not paid a single rupee from the tax and borrowed revenues of governments which are through their Endowment departments managing and administering Hindu temples . This is a characteristic of Nehruvian secularism in India.
6. Currently, strident assertions are made by the regional party –ruled states that Central government of the BJP -led NDA is not allotting and releasing funds to the states not ruled by BJP. Telangana has asserted that more money is taken by the Union government from Telangna than is given to the state government. That the union government has responsibility for the defense of this country, for funding National Highways and administration of justice etc, and special assistance to border states in north-east and north-west, funds for houses to the poor, NREG scheme, PDS, free fuel gas to poor homes etc., does not enter into the thoughts of the regional parties. The charity disbursing States have little left for economic, industrial and infrastructure ( schools, hospitals, irrigation, electricity) development; they accuse the Union government of under-mining “federal” structure of the Republic and stripping States of their resources and not funding their schemes for development.
7. The regional parties, just like the Congress, have become proprietary in that the leader and his family are the controllers of the party. Eg : AIMIM, TDP, TRS, DMK, Janatadal (Secular) in Karnataka, RJD in Bihar, SP in UP, NCP in Maharashtra. Feudalization of Congress and regional parties with hereditary succession of leaders is becoming widespread and established. The demand of the regional parties is “ it is our right (and obligation) to spend (more and more & on welfare to ensure continued success in elections). It is the duty of the union government to fund whatever money is demanded to sustain the charities distributed by our governments. It is sad that a great democracy which had high hopes of building a prosperous and powerful nation, is now a play thing of powerful, casteist , ambitious persons, who in order to win power, resort to every type of immoral and even illegal practices, in the name of serving the poor making them less and less work-oriented and more and more charity-dependent. The transformation of India from a development state into welfare state and now into a charity state is deplorable. The problems of over – population, under -education and under- development (economic, cultural, educational and spiritual) is sad. While professing the annihilation of caste, regional parties especially in A.P and Telangana are, without hesitation creating caste and sub-caste wise welfare corporations of state . This is leading to inter -caste strife within Hinduism . (1, 915 words)
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