Demonetisation is aimed curbing black money. (File) Demonetisation is aimed curbing black money. (File)

In this past week we have seen virulent hysteria from political leaders on a scale rarely seen before. The chief ministers of West Bengal and Delhi led the pack. Mamata Banerjee described the withdrawal of high-value notes as ‘worse than the Emergency’, and Arvind Kejriwal accused the Prime Minister of trying to steal Rs 10 lakh crore from the poor to compensate banks for unpaid loans taken by his rich friends. Rahul Gandhi said what he has said ad nauseam since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, that he was running a government that benefits only a handful of rich businessmen. For sheer bad taste though it was difficult to match the manner in which Ghulam Nabi Azad mocked the soldiers who died in the attack on the Uri military base.

As I listened spellbound to these leaders, day after day, I felt oddly vindicated. This is because I have humbly asserted more than once in this column that the only Indians with ‘black’ money are politicians and bureaucrats, because they do nothing to earn it. If big businessmen hide away stashes from the Income Tax Department, it is nearly always to finance elections or pay off high officials, usually for doing what they should be doing anyway. And yes, there are small businessmen and traders who evade taxes, but mostly because paying taxes in India is more difficult than evading them. This is why it disappoints me that the Prime Minister continues to pursue ‘black’ money instead of reforming the corrupt and evil tax department he inherited. Does he have no idea of the kind of people he has entrusted to perpetuate the economic dictatorship that got created in Nehruvian socialism days, when rich Indians paid 97 per cent of their earnings in taxes?

In boasting about our great democracy, most Indians of the boastful kind ignore the unpalatable truth, that despite the dismantling of the licence raj, there continues to be almost no economic freedom in our fair and wondrous land. Regulators and tax inspectors hound entrepreneurs at every step and this is why India remains at the bottom of the list when it comes to ease of doing business. On top of this come layers of red tape in the form of regulations, laws and procedural mazes.

These have remained unchanged mostly because the officials who are the only ones who can guide you out of the mazes do not want things to change. Any major change would instantly reduce the power and pelf on which they thrive. Their disdain for ordinary citizens was honed in colonial times, when us natives were treated as lesser beings and a manifestation of this has been evident ever since more than 80 per cent of our currency vanished on the stroke of the midnight hour of November 8. Personally, I believe the Prime Minister’s intentions were noble, but he left the execution of his grandiose plan to officials whose heads should be put on a chopping block. Why did they not warn him of how long it would take to print new currency? Why did they not ensure that there were enough banks to handle the currency replacement?

If from these failures the Prime Minister discovers that statism and economic freedom do not go together, then the pain that most Indians have suffered in the past few days may still be worth it. As someone who invested great hope in the closure of the Planning Commission, I find myself increasingly worried by the manner in which more and more powers to centrally plan have been invested in officials who continue the harassment of ordinary citizens. This has happened in the name of hunting out ‘black’ money. The truth is that even if every last little black rupee becomes shining and white, there is no guarantee that India will achieve her dreams of prosperity. This will only happen when ordinary Indians are given the economic freedoms they have been deprived of in the name of socialism.

Contrary to what our political leaders are saying, ordinary Indians I have met support what the Prime Minister has done. But this support will be tested hugely in the next few months because of the disruption that has been caused to the economy. If Mr Modi does not want to betray the faith the ‘common man’ continues to have in him, he must make the government more responsive to the needs of the people. This can only happen when the powers of officialdom are reduced through urgent and consistent administrative reforms. There are irrelevant ministries that can be abolished at the stroke of a pen and government departments that should have closed long ago. If the Prime Minister is worried about cutting government jobs then he must deploy officials in better ways. Swachh Bharat comes to mind as do cleaning our filthy cities and rivers.

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