Socialism, is when the state owns the factors of production, and distributes the produce among the people. People has no ownership. For when there is no ownership, different sections of the society: businessmen, farmers, women, traders, capitalists, suffer. Suffering is because of the same reasons, when our country was dependent on the britishers, for they never considered any policy for the benefit of the countrymen, but for their own good.
The britishers introduced railways, that was for their own benefits, to transport the british products from one corner of the country to other. This was a sort of socialist economy, where the people had no ownership on even modes of transport. Land revenue settlement policies ensured that farmers remain landless, without any profits, when they tilled land to produce more. The entire produce had to go to the state. The zamindars took a cut in between. Hence, though british claimed themselves as the capitalist empire, had downgraded the economy, for they adopted policies which were inherently socialistic. India should refrain from going back to those days.
Women will suffer, because they will have no rights on the land, still do not enjoy in many areas, due to patriarchal rights. Traders and businessman will suffer; since they can not reap their own profits. For the same reason, capitalists, who have established big business firms, such as Tatas, Birlas, Mahindras will suffer.
Apart from them, different sections of the society such as tourism, medical, health, party system in India, urban areas, even rural areas will suffer.
Tourism will suffer because, the tourists will be charged heftily. When there is competition in the market due to capitalist economy, the private sector try to be reasonable with prices. This will stop once socialism will creep in. This will demotivate the tourists and India will fail to attract tourists. Even domestic tourism will be affected. The GDP of the country will be affected; and it will experience a dip; because of low contribution from tourism sector.
Medical sector will also be affected. For most of the Indians live in rural areas, there is always a shortage of the doctors in primary and secondary heath facilities. There is also a dearth of medical professionals, medical kits, for example, dialysis machines, medicines that cure life threatening diseases like cancer, diabetes, HIV. Knowing this,socialism for india can not be suggested, ever. Socialistic control over human resources, such as doctors, as well as , over medicines and medical kits, will ensure their poor availability for the masses. Russia, for example , is a socialistic country, but does not grapple with this problem of making the latter available for the masses, due to low population density. After second world war, Russian population decreased. It is still struggling with the problem of low birth rate. The population in the country is ageing. China, a communist country, is ageing, too. So, it is better to keep aside the suggestion of a socialistic state for India.
Indian political system, in the socialistic pattern, suffers the risk of turning into a one party rule. Economies such as Venezuela, which is socialistic, suffer from the dominant one party problem, hyper inflation, despite the largest reserves of oil in the world. Whom to blame: socialism or one party rule? Both are interdependent. It is unwise to pull any one of the two and attribute the cause of the economic down spiral of the nation. India, on the other hand is doing well with multi party system. It has evolved with time, since independence. In 1952, in the first general election, there was only two major parties, Congress and Communist Party of India. With time, CPI was marginalized. It restricted itself to a regional party: in states like West Bengal, Kerela. Congress won the first general election, only to split into multiple factions in 1970s.
Split occurred due to different ideologies, within the same party. This split is difficult to take place in a socialistic set up. And when there is no counter currents of ideologies,
dictatorship emerges, only to bring agony to the masses. Socialism soon turn into fascism, as evident in Nazism in Germany, and fascism in Italy. Adolf Hitler in Germany, and Mussolini in Italy, were never accepted by the masses.
Democracy in India is doing well in India, owing to the constitutional safeguards.
Solution lies in strengthening democracy, and not proposing socialism. The constitution, laws of the land, rule of law will steer India into a powerful democracy. USA president, Donald Trump, recently said that, he never proposes socialism for the nation. He is right, for USA, is a major proponent of democracy in the world, and so is India, the land of Buddha and Lichchavis, a democratic Mahajanapad.
So, let us not suggest socialism for India. Because it is not in the good interest of nation.
