RSS leader Dattatreya Hosabale talks about poverty, joblessness, and the growing inequality
Whenever there are reports highlighting some unlovely aspect of India—low human development indices, hunger, press restrictions, et al—the Government and the Bharatiya Janata Party go hammer and tongs after the authors and publishers concerned. Often their motives and methodologies are questioned; there are also ad hominem attacks on such reports. The BJP’s IT Cell greatly relishes in rubbishing such accounts. But what would they do with RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale? On Sunday, he talked about the issues the Government and the BJP dislike to discuss: poverty, joblessness, and the growing inequality in the country. Poverty in the country is standing like a demon in front of us, he said, adding that it is important that we slay this demon. He also talked about 20 crore people who are below the poverty line and 4 crore who are unemployed. The unemployment rate is 7.6 per cent, he said. It is obvious that Hosabale’s views cannot be dismissed as the rants of the Khan Market gang or the fulminations of
tukde-tukde folks; he is one of their own, and that too from the RSS, the nucleus of the saffron
family. If he says something, he has to be heard—not just what he is saying but also what he is not. And what is between the lines.
While the Narendra Modi Government has done well on many fronts—infrastructure development, managing the fiscal deficit, privatisation being some of them—its record in other spheres has been less than satisfactory. On individual freedom and civil liberties, for instance, its performance has been, to put it mildly, suboptimal; that, however, doesn’t bother the RSS. But poverty and unemployment are visible and palpable; only ardent BJP supporters can say that joblessness or poverty is not a very big issue; apparently, Hosabale is not one of them. Therefore, it is time the Government addressed these grave issues with the seriousness that they call for. To begin with, it should discard the denial mode and accept that there are problems. It should try to get out of the echo chamber that it has built with itself, with its
propaganda machinery working round the clock and a large section of the media
becoming its cheerleaders. Once out of the echo chamber, the Government should take right steps, which are essentially on the supply side, to take the economy out of the morass it is in. And, by the way, grand announcements and tokenist measures make sound economic policy. As for Hosabale, his candour and straightforwardness regarding the problems of the economy are admirable, but we don’t know what kind of solutions he or his organisation, RSS, has in mind. The RSS-affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch, at whose webinar he made his remarks, offers something as nebulous as ‘Bharatiya Economic Model,’ which is nothing but a hodgepodge of homilies. Economic policy needs more than homilies; both the Government and the RSS must realise this.
