The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Govindacharya plans awareness programme

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Thursday, Jan 06, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Govindacharya plans awareness programme

By Neena Vyas

NEW DELHI, JAN. 5. Soon after coming to power in 1998 the Bharatiya Janata Party gave up its "swadeshi" economic policy and embraced globalisation, foreign direct investment and all that goes with the World Trade Organisation regime. But, its former ideologue, K.N. Govindacharya (he has left the party), has taken up from where the BJP moved away.

Over the next six months to a year, Mr. Govindacharya will try to create people's awareness at the district level — 112 districts may have registered themselves for participation at a meeting held in Varanasi last November.

A 51-member overall committee, and committees at every district level will be set up to "monitor" the spending of Government funds at the Centre and the States, the money spent from the constituency funds of the Members of Parliament and the Members of Legislative Assemblies, and generally to keep a watch on where this money is actually going.

"Naturally, if we find loopholes or discover fault lines we will ask the questions — how much money was available, where has it gone? The slogan coined for this is "hamara zila, hamari duniya, sabko bhojan, sabko kaam (our district is our world, food and work for everyone)." Mr. Govindacharya emphasised that 85 per cent or more people did not ever move out of their districts in their lifetime. Their world was their district, and the idea was to try and make a district self-sufficient in terms of providing jobs for all.

Insisting that he had no political ambition and would shun power, Mr. Govindacharya said that an alternative model of growth quite different from the trend towards centralisation and globalisation was available and could be shown to be more successful.

He said the experiment was successful in Coimbatore. The Swadeshi Jagran Manch did a manpower survey, changed the curriculum for semi-technical jobs in various educational institutes and ensured that the availability of skilled manpower matched with the needs.

Mr. Govindacharya does not shy away from claiming that while the BJP had moved away from the RSS economic agenda, his economic prescription is closer to the RSS view. However, he ruled out the possibility of his organisation ever transforming itself into a political party.

He says that the WTO regime and "mindless globalisation" have increased the disparities between the rich and poor nations and between the rich and the poor within countries and increased regional disparities and encouraged consumerism. Besides, the social costs of this kind of globalisation were enormous.

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