FDI IN RETAIL WILL DESTROY EMPLOYMENT, SAID DR. MANMOHAN SINGH IN 2002

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In an earlier blog I had recalled how when the NDA Government was in office the then Chief Whip of the Congress Party Shri Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi had cited the Planning Commission’s recommendation in favour of FDI in retail, and on that basis condemned the Vajpayee Government for contemplating this ‘anti-national’ move.

Arun Shourie as Minister of Commerce promptly stood up in Parliament to affirm that Government was not in favour of any such proposal.

At the Suraj Kund conclave of the BJP’s National Council, speaking on the Economic Resolution, my colleague Shri Venkaiah Naidu read out from a letter written by Dr. Manmohan Singh, at that point of time Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, to confirm this fact. Federation of Maharashtra Traders had conveyed their concern to him about this matter. In his letter dated December 21, 2002 Dr. Manmohan Singh said that the matter had been raised in the Rajya Sabha two days earlier. “The Finance Minister gave an assurance,” Dr. Manmohan Singh said approvingly, “that Government had no proposal to invite Foreign Direct Investment in Retail Trade.”

The letter from Federation of Associations of Maharashtra has attributed to Dr. Manmohan Singh an even more forthright criticism of FDI in retail. The letter written by Shri C.T. Shanghvi, Chairman, Foreign Trade Committee of the Federation, has said:

“Your honour would recall that during the year 2002-03 I had occasion to lead a delegation of the Federation of Associations of Maharashtra to meet your goodself as the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, in connection with the important subject of FDI in retail trade of the country.

Even before we made our detailed submissions, you had categorically stated that ‘we should not permit Foreign Direct Investment in Retail Trade’. You had further mentioned that “India does not require this kind of reform which would, rather than creating employment, destroy employment”. 

Shanghvi adds in the same letter :

We had briefed you, Sir, about the unfair trade practices such as (predatory pricing) adopted by the multinational retail chain stores organization to kill the competition by small retailers. Our delegation also drew your kind attention to the highly undesirable impact that has been felt by some of the Far Eastern Countries – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia - who had erroneously permitted FDI in retail trade during the late 1990s.

Later, our delegation met you on a couple of occasions and submitted the details of our various representations to the concerned authorities on this subject. In view of the seriousness of this issue from the overall National angle, you had raised the subject in the Rajya Sabha on 18^th/19^th December 2002 and had obtained an assurance from the then Finance Minister that there was no proposal before the Government for permitting FDI in retail trade. Your letter addressed to the Federation in this regard is enclosed for ease of reference.

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Many interesting comments have been made on the Prime Minister’s address to the nation in which defending his decision on FDI in Retail, he made the trite remark “money does not grow on trees.”

My colleague Jaswant Singh who is an ex-Army Officer has written an article for The Hindu (September 28, 2012) which recounts his conversation with his own tank-driver. I found Jaswant Singh’s article enlightening. The paragraph quoting the interaction with his driver may be very appropriate as tail piece for today’s blog. This is what Jaswant Singh says about the PM’s “rather admonitory” remark :

TAILPIECE

Just a day after this astonishing, also so unneeded, reprimand, I received a telephone call from a retired soldier colleague, who had served with me as my tank driver, sharing with me for many years my tank lean-to shelter at night. I save his name lest he be nagged by the otherwise inefficient Intelligence Bureau.  “Sahib”, he said in his thick Shekhawati dialect and accent, “please educate the PM that money does actually grow on trees and plants; we get all our fruits, vegetables and animal feed and also firewood from a ‘tree’. So tell him to think of the farmers, not of the ‘foreigners’, who over two centuries back came as a company and took away our land.  Not one ‘biswa’ (a measure of land) was left to us”. I promised him I would do so, but advised him not to disturb his retired life over such depressing thoughts, for just as our ‘dhabas’ defeated a rather cocky Colonel from Kentucky, US of A, India will defeat this, too.  And not one word of this anecdote is made up.

L.K. Advani

New Delhi

 http://blog.lkadvani.in/blog-in-english/fdi-in-retail-will-destroy-employment-said-dr-manmohan-singh-in-2002

EVEN NEHRU’S SECULARISM WAS BASED ON HINDU FOUNDATIONS

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An outstanding book I have run into these days is one by a renowned Harvard scholar Diana L Eck. The book is titled INDIA: A Sacred Geography.

Some historians say that Indians lack a sense of history. In chapter 2 of the book, captioned “What is India?” the author of this extremely well- researched book refers to such remarks, but goes on to affirm that it is however, “remarkable to discover that they (Indians) had a detailed sense of geography.” Diana adds:

Even in a time when travel throughout the length and breadth of the land must have been very difficult, there were traditions of geographical knowledge to suggest that such travel was indeed undertaken. And it is remarkable that even in a time when the subcontinent had no political unity whatsoever, those who described this territory to Alexander’s company thought of it and described it as a single land…

They also attested that India was roughly quadrilateral in shape, with the Indus River forming the western boundary, the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush stretched along the north, and the seas skirting the other two sides. They even cited its measurements: the length of the River Indus; the distance from the Indus to Pataliputra and from there to the mouth of the Ganges; the distances along the eastern and western coasts.

Alexander Cunningham, who under the British became Director of the Archaeological Survey of India, wrote in 1871:

‘The close agreement of these dimensions, given by Alexander’s informants, with the actual size of the country is very remarkable, and shows that the Indians, even at that early date in their history, had a very accurate knowledge of the form and extent of their native land.”

When the Britishers ruled our country one school of so called orientalists keen to promote the Empire were scornful of the idea that India was one country and that Indians were one people.

A prominent representative of this school was a British Civil servant, Sir John Strachey.  Speaking at the University of Cambridge in 1888, Sir Strachey said “What does this name India signify? The answer that has more than once been given sounds paradoxical, but it is true,” he said. “There is no such country, and this is the first and most essential fact about India that can be learned. India is a name, which we give to a great region including a number of different countries.”

Sir John Strachey argued that Europe had more of common culture than India. “Scotland is more like Spain than Bengal is like the Punjab…There are no countries in civilized Europe in which people differ as much as the Bengali differs from the Sikh, and the language of Bengal is as unintelligible in Lahore as it would be in London.”

Diana Eck, the author of this book is a professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies at Harvard University. While her book Banaras, City of Light is regarded a classic in the field, this 559-page tome painstakingly projecting how Hindu mythology, interwoven with India’s Geography is a powerful and convincing refutation of the imperial thesis that India is not one country, and that Indians are not one people.

This book recalls Pandit Nehru’s incarceration in the Ahmednagar Fort where he wrote his Discovery of India. It was in this book that he reflected how his travels across the country during the freedom struggle made him acutely alive to the impression of the country’s unity.  Nehru wrote:

Though outwardly there was diversity and infinite variety among our people, everywhere there was that tremendous impress of ‘oneness’, which had held all of us together for ages past, whatever political fate or misfortune had befallen us. The unity of India was no longer merely an intellectual concept for me: it was an emotional experience which overpowered me.

Diana comments: “Nehru’s vision of India surely included all its caste and regional communities, as well as its religious diversity. Although he espoused an ardent secularism throughout his political life, from his rising leadership of the Indian National Congress in the 1930s to his death as the first prime minister of India in 1964, it was a secularism that was somehow built on the kinds of deep, presumptively Hindu foundations we are describing.”

The BJP and the RSS hold that the basis of Indian nationalism is our culture. When in October 1961, the AICC held its session at Madurai, Pandit Nehru remarked that India has “for ages past been a country of pilgrimages.” He added: “All over the country you find these ancient places, from Badrinath, Kedarnath and Amarnath, high up in the snowy Himalayas down to Kanyakumari in the south.  What has drawn our people from the south to the north and from the north to the south in these great pilgrimages. It is the feeling of one country and one culture and this feeling has bound us together. Our ancient books have said that the land of Bharat is the land stretching from the Himalayas in the north to the southern seas. This conception of Bharat as one great land which the people considered a holy land has come down the ages and has joined us together, even though we have had different political kingdoms and even though we may speak different languages. This silken bond keeps us together in many ways.”

Pandit Nehru’s Madurai speech clearly spelt out India’s ancient but constantly self-renewing culture as the ‘silken bond’ that unites our diversities into ‘one country’.

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Hearty compliments to Umashree Bharati for the successful completion of the First Phase of her Ganga Samagra Abhiyan, to mark which a formal function was held at the Constitution Club on January 7, 2013.

The Abhiyan had two main components: one, a five-week yatra lasting from 20 September, 2012 to 28 October, 2012, from Ganga Sagar to Gangotri and secondly, a Manav shrinkhala (a Human Chain) all along the banks of the Ganga on December 2, 2012.

Sadhvi Uma Bharati’s campaign is aimed at two objectives. (i) Shuddh Ganga, (ii) Aviral Ganga.

At this well attended function Bharati ji gave the gathering an impressive account of the very enthusiastic response the Abhiyan had received from all communities and sections of society.

At the function held at the V.B.P. House, my daughter Pratibha’s 30 minute highly engrossing and educative film “Ganga” was screened.

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In this book on Sacred Geography, there is a separate chapter on “The Ganga and the Rivers of India”.

In this chapter, Diana says : “There are few things on which Hindu India, diverse as it is, speaks with one voice as clearly as it does on Ganga Mata. The river carries an immense cultural and religious significance for Hindus, no matter what part of the subcontinent they call home, no matter what their sectarian leaning might be. As one Hindi author writes, “Even the most hardened atheist of a Hindu will find his heart full of feelings he has never before felt when for the first time he reaches the bank of the Ganga.” Or, we might add, when the Ganga reaches him. The use of Ganga water to evoke sentiments of unity among people of diverse regions and multiple Hindu traditions should be wholly benign. After all, this is a symbol that bears only beneficence, only the brimming water pot and the lotus.

Volunteers for Umashree’s campaign had gone to all MPs, MLAs and thousands of public representatives to present them with urns of gangajal. Umaji herself had gone to present gangajal to the Rashtrapati, the Hon’ble Speaker and several other distinguished VIPs.

All those who were part of this Gangajal presentation programme were, however, unanimous that the reverence which these urns commanded was not confined to Hindus but Hindus, Muslims, Christians. Sikhs etc. all alike.

L.K. Advani

New Delhi

January 11, 2013

 http://blog.lkadvani.in/blog-in-english/even-nehru%E2%80%99s-secularism-was-based-on-hindu-foundations