Make in India
Economic policies being pursued in India since the 1990s, as we have seen earlier. have been designed to hand over control over our economy and the livelihoods of our people to foreign companies and foreign capital. We can argue that this is the true danger that we face from 'anti-national forces' -- the danger of losing sovereign control over our own destiny.
The current campaign of the government titled 'Make in India' is a clear example of this. The campaign involves inviting global capital to come in and exploit India's cheap labour, while foreign companies are provided tax breaks and subsidised land. They are also free to back profits that they make in India, using our resources and our labour; not very different from the practice of British capital during the colonial period. This is in contrast to how self reliance and development was conceived in the national movement, where developing knowledge was seen as integral to the process of developing the country and its people. This is the difference between 'Made in India' and its indigenisation vision, as opposed to inviting global capital to 'Make in India'. India's policy of self reliance grew out of the belief that if India had to grow, it must invest in its people. Even when global capital was invited, it had to transfer knowledge and technical capability. The difference between 'Made in India' of the post independence years and the current slogan of 'Make in India' lies here. One involved transfer of knowledge and building upn that knowledge, the other is simply handing over labour, land and the Indian market to foreign capital.
The difference between the vision on development, of the national movement and of those who propose a 'pure Hindu nation' is related to differing notions about nationalism. In the inclusive view
of nationalism that grew out of the anti-colonial, national movement, the nation is its people. In the current exclusionary view of nationalism, it is the land that is the nation; it is the land that is pure: the punya-bhumi and pitri-bhumi. But global capital is free to enter India, plunder its resources, and those who allow this are seen as pro-development and nationalists!
Founders of the National Movement knew who the real enemies were
The early nationalists such as Dadabhai Naroji were clear that it was colonial rule that was bleeding India and enriching Britain. His 'drain' theory, in which he attempted to show the role of colonial rule in creating poverty in India, was one of the earliest in trying to understand the economic costs of colonialism. Indian nationalists knew that British as conquerors were different from the earlier conquerors. Babur understood that once he was ruling India, there was no way he could go back to his beloved Farghana. India absorbed the Mughals, as it absorbed earlier conquerors. They became as much a part of this land as any others. Not so with the British.
The colonial conquerors looted, enslaved, massacred the people of Americas, Africa and Asia on a grand scale, and finally built a system that continually created wealth in the their own countries while impoverishing their colonies. That is why, as we can see from Angus Maddison's classic work in the graphic below, India and China, which till the 18th century, produced about 50% of the world's GDP, came down to less than 10% within the next 200 years.
Source: More than 2,000 years in single graphic
The effect of colonial rule was not limited to the draining of wealth from the colonies or semi colonies. Imperialism was creating a system that lead to the continuous development of productive forces by harnessing science and technology, while bleeding the colonies. Along with the increasing production of goods unleashed by the industrial revolution, it transferred raw materials from the colonies. It also destroyed the manufacturing industries in the colonies, converting them to captive market for selling of goods from its own factories.
16Understanding Nationalism
It was slave trade from Africa, colonial plunder from India, and other parts of the world that “financed”, or provided the necessary capital for the industrial revolution. As Karl Marx noted “... capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” While capital was and is extremely destructive, it also built productive forces on an enormous scale. This is because it harnessed science and technology for the production process. Development today is not just the development of factories and machines but the knowledge that is embedded in the machines.
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