Fifth column by Tavleen Singh: Robin Hood economics

Robin Hood Rahul also announced last week that he was so committed to ordering a caste census that he has made it his life’s mission. (Image: PTI)

Just before sitting down to write this piece, I spotted Rahul Gandhi’s latest campaign video on social media. The video began with a poster of Gautam Adani’s face on which the word ‘BAN’ was written. After this Rahul appeared and declared in an angry voice that he promised to give farmers, workers, and the poor as much money as ‘Modi has given Adani’. This is only one of many campaign videos in which the inheritor of the Nehru-Gandhi legacy speaks of how when a Congress government comes to power, it will take money from the rich and distribute it to the poor.

It is time to remind the man who seeks to unseat Modi in this general election that it is not his personal wealth that he is threatening to hand out. It is taxpayers’ money. It is not just the money of men like Adani and Ambani, but money given in taxes by all of us who pay taxes. What I find disturbing about Rahul’s rants against rich Indians is his unconcealed contempt for those who create wealth. The private sector has survived and thrived despite socialist policies like the license raj, despite debilitating taxation. It deserves to be respected and not disdained. The wealth that is owned by men like Adani has not been ‘given’ to them by Modi or any other politician. It is wealth that they have created for the country, some of which is already being paid to the government in taxes. Why is this so hard for Rahul Gandhi to understand?

The Congress Party has repeatedly indicated that if it comes to power it has plans to introduce crippling new taxes on rich people. Sam Pitroda, famous for damaging the Congress Party’s ‘secularism’ in the last general election, damaged its economic philosophy last week by announcing that it was time to bring back an inheritance tax. Congress spokesmen quickly distanced the party from Pitroda’s statement, but redistribution of wealth Robin Hood style is something that Rahul Gandhi has talked about often since the campaign for this election began.

It is time for him to be reminded of what India looked like when taxes on the rich were so insane in his Granny’s time that businessmen were ordered to pay 97% of their earnings as tax. The result was that not only was the private sector nearly destroyed but government itself had no money to distribute to the poor. It was a general redistribution of poverty that resulted. India has taken decades to recover and to prosper enough for a middle class to emerge and for a hesitant celebration of prosperity to begin. In the past ten years it is to Modi’s credit that he has continued with economic policies that encourage the creation of wealth. In the opinion of those who would like to see the Indian economy really soar, he has not done enough to end socialism. He needs to do much more to totally rid us of an economic ideology that kept India mired in poverty.

Robin Hood Rahul also announced last week that he was so committed to ordering a caste census that he has made it his life’s mission. There can be compromises in politics, he said, but no compromises when you make something your life’s mission. He has clarified more than once that the purpose of this census is to enable the redistribution of wealth. So, castes that fall into the poorest category will be the first to benefit. This is reverse casteism at a time when the divisions of caste in urban India have blurred. In villages higher caste bigots may choose not to eat at the same table as those they consider lower than them, but this is not possible in a city restaurant.

Instead of coming up with retrograde economic ideas it would be better for the Congress Party’s ‘thinkers’ to examine why India continues to have millions of people living below or just above a shamefully low poverty line. They will find that the only reason why this has happened is because of bad economic policies. Instead of policies that encouraged private enterprise, we followed for decades economic policies that ground it down. It is my considered opinion that this was done to enable cynical political leaders to portray themselves as benefactors and messiahs of the downtrodden.

If the downtrodden vanished into the middle classes, then how would politicians be able to wander about at election time promising people freebies like monthly pocket money for women and apprenticeships for the unemployed? Instead of freebies what the poor need are the tools to lift themselves out of poverty like good schools and institutions that teach people the skills that would make them employable. But if this happens then how will politicians lure voters by promising them more and more government jobs?

In one of Rahul’s rants, he promises to ‘create lakhpatis’. It is not the job of a politician to go around creating rich people. It should be the job of every politician to create the conditions in which ordinary people have a chance to become millionaires out of their own enterprise. Instead of promising to take us forward the Congress Party is promising to take us back to a time when nearly half of India lived in poverty. This regressive recipe to win the hearts and votes of Indians is unlikely to work.