New avatar for party that fights for freedom from government

As ideas go, it was ahead of its time. When C Rajagopalachari, Minoo Masani and Piloo Mody launched the Swatantra Party, espousing the end of the licence-quota-permit raj and advocating that the government get out of economic decision-making, it was applauded mostly by industrialists and princely India.

In the mid-1960s, it even became the single largest opposition party in Parliament with 44 seats in the Fourth Lok Sabha (1967-71). But India's brush with Right-Liberal politics ended in the 1970s with the death of C Rajagopalachari.

Today, with the Congress returning to the Left-of Centre slogans like "inclusive growth", Liberal leader Sharad Joshi feels there is some traction for the Swatantra Party's new national incarnation "� the Swatantra Bharat Paksha (SBP). The party's national office was opened in New Delhi today.

Joshi's motto is: "Sarkar kya samasya suljhayegi, sarkar swayam ek samasya hai" (the government is not a part of the solution, it is a part of the problem). He models this on Rajagopalachari's famous quote: "The business of government is government and not business".

The SBP believes that apart from law and order, health, education and the social sector, the government should not dabble in business, and definitely not in economic policy-making.

"The licence-permit raj should be thrown out lock, stock and barrel. It has destroyed the country," said Vinay Hardikar, the party's newly appointed national secretary.

How many people buy the argument that food subsidies should be abolished, market forces should decide the price of petroleum and kerosene, ration shops should compete in an open market, all defence production should be outsourced and India should wind up programmes like the rural job scheme and leave the problem of feeding the poor to the most successful poverty eradication programme in India: The langars in gurdwaras.

The SBP is not sure. It has been recognised by the Election Commission as a state party but it has no symbol as it does not meet the vote benchmark. When asked about the party's vote share in the elections it had contested, Hardikar said he would "have to check."

He said the party has two MLAs in the Maharashtra Assembly following the 2004 elections "� the Election Commission records only one MLA: Wamanrao Sadashivrao Chatap. Sharad Joshi has been elected to the Upper House of Parliament.

The difference between those who idolise Ayn Rand and the followers of the SBP is: For the SBP, the God is the farmer, not just the small one with a marginal holding but the big one as well. The SBP is all for new industrialists "� young professionals without a hangover from the past.

The SBP calls itself totally secular, though it continues to be a part of the NDA and believes Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden represent "religious fundamentalist terrorism", in itself a leftover of history as a result of statist economic fundamentalism. The SBP is opposed to caste and community.

In the 1960s, Sharad Joshi belonged to a pillar of the state, the Indian Administrative Service. He quit in search of an elusive dream: India, the nation, but with a limited state. The SBP is trying to help him find it.