Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

US living off us, says Sudarshan

BS Regional Bureau in Nagpur

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh believes the US is living off countries with higher savings rates, such as Japan, China and India.

RSS Sarsanghachalak K S Sudarshan, in his Vijayadashmi address, said an in-depth study of the US economy revealed it was following the ancient Charvaka principle: borrow and enjoy.

Charvaka was an Indian philosopher of the sixth century BC, who founded the school of pure materialism and atheistic thinking bearing his name.

"The US has borrowed over Rs 2,50,000 crore (Rs 2,500 billion) from the world. It saves very little and spends a lot. It imports more than it exports. Saving is considered a sin in that country. Americans have already spent their next two years' income, using credit cards," Sudarshan said.

The traditional Vijayadashmi address, considered to be a summary of the 'Sangh' views on the nation and the future of the country, was held on two days, before the Dussehra celebrations for the first time in the 77-year history of the RSS. This is to enable more people to attend it.

Besides the usual bashing of dogmatic Muslim and Christian clerics, Sudarshan demanded an 'anti-conversion law' for the nation and removal of those in the Planning Commission who advocated a more westernized model of the economy.

Speaking on the US model of economy, he said the US got its money to spend from those countries which were in the habit of saving.

"Japan, China and India save and the US spends." He said countries of the world invested their money in dollars while the US re-invested the money in these very countries and enjoyed better returns.

"India has its $58 billion in US banks. China's $160 billion and Japan's trillions of dollars are invested in the US. While we invested $58 billion in the US, the US invested only $20 billion in India. We get 1-1.5 per cent interest on our deposits in the US, whereas the US invests the same money back in India and gets 5 per cent interest," he explained to the thousands of Swayamsevaks and admirers gathered.

Sudarshan lamented some people considered the US as their ideal and criticised our savings habit.

He quoted India-born US economist Jagdish Bhagwati as telling former finance minister Manmohan Singh that "Indians are indulging in wasteful savings. Encourage them to spend more. Let them buy expensive cars or even cosmetics. That will put India on a growth curve."

Sudarshan said the Charvaka philosophy, discarded by our people, was being sold back to China, Japan and India.

"Today we are exhorted to spend on useless things, but are also advised to accept unrestricted aid from foreign countries," he said.

Sudarshan said even the Planning Commission (in the Tenth Plan) displayed two streams of thought: one committee recommended we should depend on our own resources and emphasised rural development and employment generation. The other insisted without foreign direct investment, progress was impossible and advocated 100 per cent FDI in every field.

Claiming that repeated efforts were being made to invite multinational companies in retail trade, he said this would result in "small and medium businessmen becoming agents of these companies and losing their freedom."

Corporatisation of agriculture on the US lines was also being proposed, Sudarshan observed, and demanded that the government should purge the Planning Commission of people "hell-bent on destroying the morale of the country by their insistence on the inevitability of foreign dependence for our development".

Sudarshan also came down heavily on what he called was the demand for "atomisation of the social structure".

His premise was that the US and European nations had a social security system which cost 29 per cent to 65 per cent of GDP to maintain, because of a weak social structure.

"Nobody in the US is motivated to save. The reason is, every individual there lives for himself. He doesn't feel any sense of responsibility because the institutions of family, neighbourhood and community have been destroyed. So save for whom?"

He said institutions like family or community could not be created by law because they evolved through a historical process.

"In the eastern world, in countries such as China, Japan and India, this social capital has not yet been destroyed, but the West wants atomisation of the social structure here too."

Powered by

ALSO READ:
More Money Headlines