The crisis in contemporary India is manufactured by a political duopoly: the arrogance of the Congress Party and the dominance of the BJP. Crony capitalists are the beneficiaries of both the economic crisis and the growth that accompanies it. A Hinduised Congress and a Congressised Hindutva represent the same bourgeois politics, in which corporate interests prosper at the expense of India and Indians. The Adani and Ambani groups did not acquire their influence over government by accident or by corporate preference alone. The BJP government under Narendra Modi has created favourable conditions for a crony capitalism that the Congress Party founded.
Its roots lie in the Bombay Plan of 1944-45, drafted by industrialists such as JRD Tata, GD Birla and Purshottamdas Thakurdas, which shaped development planning and economic policy in postcolonial India under Congress leadership. The Indian state under the Congress secured and strengthened corporate interests, and it deepened crony capitalism with the economic reforms of 1991. Liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, reinforced by structural adjustment policies, weakened the welfare state and squeezed public resources for corporate profit. These policies were just as crucial to the governments of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Narendra Modi, which enabled crony capitalists to expand until the Adani and Ambani groups now control much of India's economic life.
Indian crony capitalism, with its jobless growth and parasitic culture, destroys the conditions for innovation and for development that works for people. It also undermines the mobilisation of resources for national development and public welfare. The reforms shaped by the Congress allowed BJP governments to sell national assets, natural resources and land to corporations, often at low prices or for free, in the name of job creation. Congress-led governments had already hollowed out the manufacturing base, and the BJP is now walking the same ruinous path. The two parties differ little in their class interests. Both serve corporate capitalism, which is destroying the lives and livelihoods of Indians and draining national wealth.
Agriculture and the rural economy tell the same story. Congress policies subsidised fertiliser corporations while reducing and later withdrawing support for farmers, so that growing food and buying it in the market have both become expensive. The corporatisation of agriculture, pursued by both parties, has produced a deep agrarian crisis. Water for industry under the Congress and water for data-storage companies under the BJP, even as farmers face scarcity and safe drinking water is hard to find, define the everyday practice of both. Land, water, electricity and infrastructure are all subsidised for corporations, while welfare benefits face austerity in the name of national interest and illusory growth. From industry to agriculture to services, policy under both parties is designed to protect and promote corporate interests.
Majoritarian politics, corporate capitalism, centralised decision-making and a Brahminical social order are the four pillars on which both parties stand. A Hinduised Congress and a Congressised Hindutva work in harmony to serve corporate interests, and both work against the interests of the country's working people.
Both parties have also built legal structures that empower corporations while terrorising citizens. The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) were products of Congress governments, while the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) was enacted under the BJP-led NDA government in 2002. The BJP has since strengthened UAPA, and these laws are used to demonise democratic dissent and weaken constitutional democracy. Their targets include Binayak Sen, Umar Khalid, the late G. N. Saibaba and Stan Swamy, Soni Sori, Sudha Bharadwaj and many young idealists and students. Their only offence was to question power in order to democratise it, to remind governments that they must work for the people, and to expose the ruling class and its corporate bonhomie. For fighting for democracy and citizenship rights, they are branded anti-national and terrorist. Both parties persecute those who reject the politics of capitalist consensus.
This is the context in which Indians must seek political alternatives and alliances beyond the BJP and the Congress. Their politics is incompatible with the interests of the country and its people. The Congress's arrogance, combined with the BJP's ignorant arrogance, is a twin danger for India.
The BJP that rules India today was born in the laboratory of the Congress, which allowed the RSS to flourish and damage the idea of a secular India. The leaderships of both parties are corrupt, criminal and communal, in different ways and to different degrees. Both curtail people's freedoms, weaken citizenship rights and pursue variants of authoritarianism. Rejecting both is therefore the first step towards creating an alternative that works for the people. A developed and strong India is possible only when Indians are prosperous and live in peace and harmony.
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*Academic based in UK
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