Failure of
Socialism Modern India established itself in its
constitution as a secular socialist state. The main idea of socialism is that the
government helps the people and raises the poor through national policies, particularly
nationalized industries and welfare policies. Such socialism is not a Bharatiya idea. It
turns the state into a kind of God and its citizens into beggars seeking the favor of the
government. It does not encourage independence and effort in the masses but turns them
into children and wards of the
state.
Leftist political leaders in India, as elsewhere, found that they could easily control
such uneducated masses, fashioning them into vote banks under the promise of government
rewards, which encourages the government to keep the people backward. The problem is that a government can only use the resources of the
country gained by economic control and taxation. The result is that socialism stifles
economic development and a large section of the country becomes dependent upon government
favors, which further creates corruption and bribery. This has happened to some
extent in all socialist states but India is among the worst. The nation instead of raising
all of its people together, has its different classes trying to feed off one another and
fighting with each other for government patronage.
The same socialist leaders, used to a politics of vote
banks and bribery, can easily adjust themselves to pay offs from multinational
corporations, as we are now seeing in China and other communist countries as they open up
to the capitalist world. In this way socialism can easily become the most corrupt form of
capitalism. Instead the people must be awakened to their own initiative, which the
government should help but not substitute for or manipulate to its own advantage. A
Bharatiya model of social responsibility on a personal and community level must arise to
avoid the excesses of either state socialism or capitalism. |