But when these people came to rule the country in March1998, they ran a gimmick by declaring Swadeshi economic policy coated in communal politics. We associate the names of historic personalities with the name of Swadeshi. They include Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and many other leaders, thinkers and martyrs. They cherished the ideal to serve their motherland by asking people to buy the inferior goods made in their own country instead of foreign made goods. So when murderers of the same Swadeshi Mahatma Gandhi spoke of Swadeshi, people were confused. The people of this country were already passing through a spell of IMF led policies of globalisation from the beginning of the nineties decade. In this context when people heard of Swadeshi, the likely expectation was that BJP’s economic policies would emancipate them from the process of globalisation and build up an economy on the basis of self-reliance and sovereignty. But what really happened was unbearable and dangerous. The government did not depart an inch from the policies of globalisation. Over and above it created new wounds. On the one hand we had Pokhran blasts. Prehistoric barbarity was unleashed upon the religious minority. The traditions of secularism, tolerance and unity within diversity were attempted to be uprooted in the garb of a distorted view of nationalism. It is this regime again which surrendered to foreign capital unconditionally and converted their homeland to a centre of neocolonial plunder. An important example would be the passing of the new Patent Bill in the Parliament. The Swadeshi mask of the barbaric government has been fully exposed.

The economic policy, which dominated our country in the nineties, was globalization. Both Congress and United Front were unanimous on the grounds of economic policy. The crux of the policy was to throw the industrial and agricultural sectors directly in foreign competition and the refusal to grant them any protection. The policies of privatization and stabilization were linked to this. He core of the stabilization policy was to reduce the share of subsidy on food and fertilizers serving the poor people of our country. This was the only way in which the fiscal deficit was attempted to be reduced. The policy of privatization was based on proportionately increasing the private sector of the economy compared to the public sector.

A pertinent comment can be made in the context of open economy models. The theory of comparative advantage propounded by David Ricardo was discarded a hundred years ago in the West. Similarly no evidence can be found in theoretical literature in economics to support the policies of stabilization and privatization.