RESOLUTION ON THE CURRENT SITUATION

Summary

This English-language Swatantra Party dossier combines Madhu Mehta’s “Resolution on the Current Situation” with minutes of the party’s General Council meeting in Bangalore on September 17–18, 1971, election procedures and results, correspondence, and annexed resolutions. In the opening resolution, the party argues that India’s economic stagnation, inflation, currency depreciation, corruption, insecurity, and weakening public institutions reflect the failures of prolonged Congress rule and an outdated socialist orientation. It presents the party’s proposed alternative as a programme to reject Marxist values, protect the individual, and offer the people “Our Path” as India’s governing philosophy.

Key points

• The opening resolution asks Indians to assess whether post-independence governance has advanced Mahatma Gandhi’s goal of wiping every tear from every Indian’s eyes.
• It criticises Congress’s uninterrupted rule, repeated constitutional amendments, economic planning, taxation, foreign borrowing, inflation, and currency depreciation.
• It attributes social disorder and declining faith in democracy to socialism, corruption, broken political promises, and the neglect of individual capacities and rights.
• The party proposes three immediate objectives: destroying what it calls decadent Marxist values, saving the individual, and presenting “Our Path” as an Indian way of life.
• The General Council minutes document the election of H. M. Patel as president, five vice-presidents, Madhu Mehta as general secretary, K. Sundaram as treasurer, five joint secretaries, and the National Executive.
• The meeting adopted resolutions on fundamental rights, Bangla Desh, the Indo-Soviet Treaty, the Press Bill, unemployment, and food shortages in northern and southern India.
• The annexed fundamental-rights resolution defends constitutional rights as essential to democracy and to protecting weaker sections from abuse of authority.
• The Bangla Desh resolution calls for a time limit and firmer government action to secure the return of refugees, while criticising foreign support for Pakistan and the economic burden of the refugee influx.