Rahul’s Editorial Debut

RAHUL GANDHI'S op-ed, published in The Indian Express earlier this month, copied ideas from a book on 18th-century Anglo-Irish parliamentarian Edmund Burke.

Cambridge University Press had published Burke's polit­ical and social views in December 2012. Burke, a member of the House of Commons between 1766 and 1794, was a phi­losopher, statesman and politician. Born in Ireland's capi­tal Dublin, Burke knew the harm British colonialism had caused to Ireland—Britain's first colony.

Chapter 13 of the Cambridge book, written by Frederick G Whelan, describes Burke's strongly held views on British colo­nialism in India: "India was one of the great causes of Burke's political career, one that he pursued from around 1780 until his retirement from parliament. Indeed, in his own ret­rospective judgement, it was the cause 'on which I value myself the most'.

"Burke became convinced that the East India Company [and by extension

the British parliament] was abusing its trust by perpetrating [or permitting] se­vere forms of oppression and plunder of India and, more ominously, destroying the social foundations of a great, though alien, civilisation. Analysing and expos­ing the various abuses of imperial rule, Burke [together with his fellow Whigs under Fox] called for reforms. More dra­matically, as a way of raising both parliamentary and public consciousness about the affairs of India, Burke pursued the prosecution and impeachment of Warren Hastings, the for­mer governor-general of Bengal, whom Burke believed had directed and personified many of the abusive practices."

Instead of taking Burke's arguments forward, Rahul Gandhi goes off on a tangent to attack business monopolies in independent India. He writes: "The original East India Company wound up over 150 years ago, but the raw fear it then generated is back. A new breed of monopo­lists has taken its place. They have amassed colossal wealth, even as India has become far more unequal and unfair for everybody else. Our institutions no longer belong to our peo­ple, they do the bidding of monopolists. Lakhs of businesses have been decimated and India is unable to generate jobs for her youth. Bharat Mata is mother to all her children. The mo­nopolisation of her resources and power, this blatant denial of the many for the sake of a chosen few, has wounded her."

Rahul errs by conflating Indian business monopolies after 1947 with the East India Company's colonial "monop­oly". The former was due to a misplaced Nehruvian socialist Licence Raj ideology. The latter, as Burke explained, was the plunder of India by a foreign colonial power.

Rahul's real targets in his op-ed are two business "monop­olists", Adani and Ambani, not British colonialism which he uses only as a prop. But Rahul's ghost writer knew that in a country with over 120 startup unicorns, criticising Indian business monopolies would be widely ridiculed. Adani and Ambani were therefore not named even once in the op-ed though every word in the article was aimed at them.

Monopolies are counter-productive. As far back as 1969, the Indira Gandhi government passed the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act. Ironically, instead of discourag­ing monopolies, the Licence Raj encouraged them. If an entrepreneur wanted to set up a manufacturing unit, he needed a licence from the government.

Legacy business families contin­ued to profit from the Licence Raj. They already possessed licences. So, Bajaj scooters had a four-year delivery waiting list. A young Dhirubhai Ambani in the 1960s, meanwhile, sat outside the offices of bureaucrats in Delhi to plead, cajole, implore babus to give him a licence. Dhirubhai once said he was happy to salaam a peon in a government office in Delhi to get his work done.

That was how the Licence Raj operated in Nehruvian India. Monopolies thrived under its socialist gaze. Does Rahul dwell on this? Naturally not. But he reluctantly recognises that India has come a long way since the days of Bajaj scooters and their four-year waiting queues.

The op-ed obviously cannot ignore the surge in new start­ups that are breaking old business monopolies—from scooters to fintech. Rahul concedes the arrival of a new breed of young founders: "InMobi, Manyavar, Zomato, Fractal Analytic, Araku Coffee, Tredence, Amagi, ID Fresh Food, PhonePe, Moglix, Sula Vineyards, Juspay, Zerodha, Veritas, Oxyzo, Avendus."

What the op-ed does not mention, however, is that none of these startups is founded by a dynast. That is an unintend­ed lesson for political dynasts. Monopolies in political parties, appropriated generation after generation by mediocre dynasts, are India's real problem.