Garibi Hatao: The Swatantra Way

Garibi Hatao: The Swatantra Way

A Swatantra Party publication by Manubhai Amersey

Summary

Garibi Hatao: The Swatantra Way is a Swatantra Party pamphlet by Manubhai Amersey, written after “26 years of self-rule” (its data and references point to about 1973), arguing that Mrs Gandhi’s garibi hatao slogan had won her an election but that her Government’s economic model was making poverty worse, not better. Amersey begins by defining the poverty line in physical terms: an average Indian needs some 2,250 calories a day, translating to about 518 grammes of foodgrains, and anyone lacking the purchasing power to secure that is poor. On this measure he charts a relentless rise in rural poverty — from 36 per cent of the rural population in 1947, to 52 per cent in 1961-62, to 71 per cent in 1968-69, with 1973 estimates crossing the “red line” toward 80 per cent of the rural population (more than 60 per cent of all Indians) — even as good monsoons, Five-Year Plans, the Green Revolution and huge inflows of taxes and foreign aid should have helped. Urban absolute poverty, by contrast, stayed roughly steady, and he notes with irony that a Bombay beggar’s average income far exceeds the national per capita figure.

The pamphlet’s diagnosis is that India copied the Soviet communist pattern of development, concentrating planning on heavy industry and State enterprise in the cities while starving the countryside. Industry, public and private alike, enjoyed built-in advantages: machinery imported at favourable exchange rates, cheap labour and indigenous raw materials bought below international parity, while finished goods were sold to villagers at some 400 per cent above parity. The result is a “squeeze” in which rural India sells its produce at world prices and buys back manufactures at multiples of them, all under a “permit-licence-quota raj” that Amersey says has legalised loot and sanctified poverty.

A long central section documents the injustice to farmers. Despite an Agricultural Prices Commission, the cultivator receives only international parity — or less — for rice, wheat (suppressed by cheap PL-480 imports), cotton, oilseeds, jute (burdened with export duty), coarse cereals and plantation crops. The one exception is sugarcane, which Amersey calls a “Congress political crop”: grown on a small acreage but fetching about eight times world parity, its prices manipulated by Congress state units to raise party and ministerial funds. Meanwhile the farmer pays inflated prices for fertiliser and cloth and a “cess pool” of levies. Since peasant proprietors and landless labourers together make up the great bulk of the population, he argues, garibi cannot be removed until natural justice is done to the man on the land.

Against what he calls the “centralized idiocy” of Soviet-style planning — plans drawn up by people who have never seen a farm, and a Plan of Rs 520 billion that aggravates rather than cures the imbalance — Amersey sets out “the Swatantra way.” Industrialisation must be rapid but tied to abolishing poverty, and that means rural industrialisation built on the by-products of the farm: rice and wheat bran, groundnut husks, cotton linters, molasses and bagasse. He offers a worked example in which processing rice-bran oil could yield Rs 9,000 million a year to rice farmers and 8 million jobs, claiming two such schemes would cut poverty faster than any number of Five-Year Plans. Rural industrialisation, he concludes, would create jobs, ease pressure on land, make land ceilings unnecessary and bring prosperity where it is most needed — and only the Swatantra way can truly eliminate garibi.

Key points

• A Swatantra Party pamphlet by Manubhai Amersey (internal references place it around 1973), attacking Mrs Gandhi’s garibi hatao slogan as a promise her economic model could not keep.

• Defines the poverty line physically — about 2,250 calories or 518 grammes of foodgrains a day — and measures poverty by whether people can afford that intake.

• Charts rural poverty rising from 36% (1947) to 52% (1961-62) to 71% (1968-69), with 1973 estimates nearing 80% of the rural population despite plans, aid and good monsoons.

• Blames the Soviet “communist pattern” of heavy-industry, city-centred, State-led planning that neglected the countryside and its infrastructure.

• Describes a rural “squeeze”: farmers sell produce at international parity but buy manufactures at ~400% above parity, under a “permit-licence-quota raj” that “legalised loot”.

• Documents underpricing of rice, wheat (suppressed by PL-480), cotton, oilseeds, jute and coarse grains, contrasting them with sugarcane, a “Congress political crop” fetching ~8x world parity.

• Condemns “centralized idiocy” — planners ignorant of rural life and a Rs 520 billion Plan that worsens the imbalance (India can’t make a good screw yet builds MIGs).

• Proposes “the Swatantra way”: rural industrialisation on farm by-products (rice bran, husks, molasses, bagasse) to raise farm incomes and jobs faster than any Five-Year Plan.

---

Ingested 2026-07-21 from the CCS source archive. AI-drafted summary awaiting editorial review.