Editorial

The Hidden Truth

The BJP has lived upto its reputation as a party that has no principles. How else does one to understand, let alone accept, its pompous claims of ushering in a "feel good factor"? This party that stayed put on the margins during the freedom struggle, now makes another astonishing claim that it is a nationalist party. The BJP wants the people to believe that in just five years it has transformed the backward India into a prosperous nation. We are all very well aware of the unquestioned expertise of this regional party masquerading as a national outfit in Goebbalian tactics. No other political party can match the BJP's immense capacity to turn facts into fiction and vice versa. Having mastered the Goebbalian techniques of repeating falsehood ad nauseum to make it look like truth, it has now undertaken rather effortlessly the job of creating a grand illusion to fool the people. The advertisement explosion covering the print media and TV is infact a desperate attempt to hide its immense shortcomings and failures virtually on every front. As Smt. Sonia Gandhi had said in the Lok Sabha the BJP has failed miserably to keep any of its poll promises.

In a nation that is dogged by unemployment, creation of jobs is by any reckoning most important for any government. And a government's performance is measured by the success or failure on this front. What is the record of the BJP-NDA? They had formed the coalition government promising one crore jobs a year. Where are these jobs? Naturally, the BJP leaders, who are otherwise very vociferous, do not touch this issue. The reason is very simple. This government has failed to create jobs. Whether it is creation of jobs, poverty eradication or economy, a comparison of the performance of this government with that of the last Congress government (1991-96) would show how poor is in reality the record of the latter. Even in the much publicized foreign exchange balance, the BJP-NDA record is nothing compared to 1991-96. The Congress government started with a foreign exchange reserve of just $ 1.1 US billion in 1990-91 but took it to $30 billion US in 1995-96, a growth of 30 times. Does the BJP-NDA outfit's claim match this? The fact is that the claims the present government is making are the results of the hard and visionary work of the previous Congress governments. If the foreign exchange reserves have crossed $ 100 billion US, it is largely due to the introduction of reforms and information technology by Rajiv Gandhi. When Rajiv Gandhi insisted on this visionary step several political parties opposed it as being irrelevant!

Similarly, when the Congress government expanded reforms during 1991-96, the same parties which are gloating over the fruits of reforms, opposed them. The truth is that if today India is among the front-ranking nations in the world, it is only because of the work done by the Congress governments. The planning process started by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru laid the framework for a bright future. The expansion of the public sector, especially in areas where the private sector had no resources to operate, laid the industrial infrastructure for growth. Today if India is able to export steel even to the most developed American and European markets, is it not due to the farsighted action of Pandit Nehru and Smt. Indira Gandhi in setting up and promoting indigenous steel industry? Can the BJP or its alliance partners morally take any credit for this?

Virtually in every sector, be it textiles, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, leather, cement or education, it is the Congress that laid the foundation and built up the structure. A good part of the $ 100 billion US reserves are due to the remittances from Indian exporters abroad. How has this happened? It was during Smt. Indira Gandhi's time hundreds of medical and engineering colleges were set up which are now producing engineers and doctors to meet global needs! It is unfortunate the BJP does not practice even a single principle it preaches and turns truth the way it wants. But history cannot be changed, nor the peoples' memory. The spade will be called spade.