Congress is anti-growth as growth will eliminate poverty. Elimination of poverty will not allow it to practice votebank politics and act as Messiah of the poor, backward and minorities. It had to put brakes on fast growing economy and also make sure that the fiscal situation worsens, surest way to keep country poor and backward.
It therefore unleashed Jairam Ramesh, an intellectual and allowed him free hand in halting all the projects that were going on. A politician would have found ways and means to let the projects continue and required compliance on a forward basis. Not the intellectual minister. For him it is either black or white or as he prefers to call it - go or no go. Once Jairam Ramesh managed to stop several large projects and created the nervousness amongst industrialists, he was moved to another ministry to carry out even more damages (though ostensible posture was he was being shifted as a punishment). And lo and behold, we had the Land Acquisition Bill unleashed on us, which required farmers to be paid 6 times the market value of land. So Jairam Ramesh first stopped all ongoing projects, then ensured no new projects can be launched since land acquisition will become impossible. Agenda 1 of putting brakes on fast growing economy achieved without people/industrialists realising what hit them.
Then comes the Agenda 2 of ruining the fiscal situation. High crude prices and refusal to let diesel prices be raised helped achieve this Agenda to a large extent. However to make sure that this Agenda is not derailed, Congress came up with the brilliant idea of Food Security Bill. This will ensure a huge burden on exchequer, offer opportunities to middlemen to pilfer the treasury of the country and the aid meant for poor will never reach the poor. Of course, we have been taught that dont give men a fish but teach him to fish. Growth will give poor the method of fishing but we cant allow that so give him fish i.e. ration or subsidised foodgrains. Never mind if the foodgrains meant for him never reach him but the politician can claim to have done his deed and claim credit.
Growth also leads to higher tax revenues and can improve the fiscal situation. Putting a brake on growth ensures fiscal situation doesnt improve.
Poor fiscal situation leads to depreciation of the currency, leads to high interest rates as govt needs to borrow, leads to high inflation as govt will print money to meet non-development led deficit and lead to erratic growth, destroying the confidence of investors. We are back to pre-1996 era of Congress rule (of 50 years). And the surest sign of this was given by the Hon'ble Finance Minister who while talking about inflation and high interest rates reminded Parliament of similar situation of 1980 and how growth rebounded back the next year. Obviously when rupee depreciates, growth will rebound for a year only to retreat back the next year. I wont be surprised if we see negative growth in some quarters over next 3 years. A -25% compression in Capital Goods sector is the first sign of things to come.
It is obvious why Congress does not like India Shining slogan.
Democracy with so-called benevolent politicians practicing votebank politics is probably the worst kind of government that people can have. Dictators/fascists/autocrats at least get criticised and dont get sympathy of people but with a democratic form of government, politicians do exactly what dictators/fascists/autocrats do and get accolades for working for betterment of lives of poor. Except for a lone crusader Anna Hazare who has shown politicians in their true colours.
Icing on cake of votebank politics is the blatant and shameless legitimisation of arsonic activities by the Govt. What i am referring to is the gift of Rs 3600 crore Indu Mills to RPI Activists who illegally occupied the mills and refused to vacate it. And of course none of the political parties dare oppose this move of the government (even a feeble or token opposition is absent) for fear of backlash.
I also believe that high corruption leads to high generation of black money sucking out legitimate liquidity from the system and leading to perpetually higher rates of interest and high inflation. This is very symptomatic of pre-96 era. Interest rates came down only post-98 and this resulted in lower inflation and led to golden period of consistent high growth.
Most of the large developmental infrastructure projects like telecom, roads, power took off in the non-Congress ruled era.
The sad part is that party which helped show India's potential is plagued by infighting and failing to seize the opportunity presented by Congress. Each leader of BJP wants to become the Prime Minister (at least that is the general public perception) and therefore we dont see a coherent strategy to counter the misgovernance of the country from India's largest opposition party.
