Modi govt’s selective embrace of RSS ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya’s ideology in policymaking

With Modi govt set to present its 12th budget, a look at how closely it aligns with the philosophy of its ideologue, whether on privatisation, urbanisation, or small-scale industry.

New Delhi: “Let there be a reassessment of the relative role of the private and the public sector… There are a number of plans which can be safely-handed over to the private sector,” Deendayal Upadhyaya, the Jana Sangh ideologue wrote in 1958 in The Two Plans: Promises, Performance, and Prospects shortly after the launch of the second Five-Year Plan.

Sugar, textiles, soap, cement, porcelain, paper, ceramic, leather—none need to be under the purview of the public sector, he said. “Let the public sector unburden itself of some of the load it has unnecessarily taken upon itself.”

The civil services need not be handling all industrial affairs—the government could have saved enormous money and effort in the first Five-Year Plan had it sought the cooperation of private managerial and organisational talent, he contended

Over six decades later in 2021, in an emphatic endorsement of the private sector and an equally emphatic denouncement of the IAS in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Sab kuch babu hi karenge. IAS ban gaye matlab woh fertiliser ka kaarkhana bhi chalayega, chemical ka kaarkhana bhi chalayega, IAS ho gaya toh woh hawai jahaz bhi chalayega. Yeh kaunsi badi taakat bana kar rakh di hai humne? Babuon ke haath mein desh de karke hum kya karne waale hain? Humare babu bhi toh desh ke hain, toh desh ka naujawan bhi toh desh ka hai.” (Babus will do everything. By dint of becoming IAS officers, they’ll operate fertiliser warehouses and also chemical warehouses, even fly airplanes. What is this big power we have created? What are we going to achieve by handing the reins of the nation to babus. Our babus are also citizens, but so are the youth of India.)

Modi’s statement came two years after his government unprecedentedly started institutionalised lateral entry to infuse the government with talent from the private sector, and days after it announced a new Public Sector Enterprises (PSE) policy, under which sick public sector companies would be privatised.

The parallels between Upadhyaya and Modi’s rhetoric are unmissable—the endorsement of the private sector as crucial to nation-building, the disdain for the monopoly of the public sector, and the denouncement of IAS officers handling all economic affairs.

On first reading, it would appear that the Modi government indeed draws its economic philosophy from Upadhyaya, whose Integral Humanism was adopted as the official philosophy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1985.

Since 2014, when the BJP came to power, concerted efforts have been made to elevate Upadhyaya to the level of Gandhi.

“Deendayal Upadhyaya is to the BJP what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was to Congress,” R. Balashankar, former editor of Organiser, said.

From naming schemes like the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Antyodaya Yojana after him to erecting a large 72-feet statue of him in front of the BJP office in New Delhi; from holding a nationwide celebration programme to mark his birth centenary in 2017 to referring to him as the guiding force for the party–Upadhyaya has had an overwhelming ideological presence in the party and government’s rhetoric over the past 10 years.

Yet, beyond Integral Humanism, little is known about what Upadhyaya’s economic philosophy actually was. What was the political and economic context in which he was writing? Did he support the private sector? Was he anti-capitalism or did he represent petty capitalists? How was his brand of Swadeshi different from Gandhi’s? Was he writing more as an economic thinker or a political actor? Are there any overlaps between his economic philosophy and the economic policies of the Modi government over the past 10 years? And finally, are those overlaps ideological, rhetorical or purely coincidental?