It is interesting to how the Telecom regulator in India is going after Big 3 telecom operators, Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea, for alleged stopping Reliance Jio to enter the telecom market. They are certainly the biggest 3 players and with the merger of Idea and Vodafone, a big market player in the telecom sector will emerge. Reliance Telecom is also going full speed to acquire other small operators. Recently, it acquired Aircel. The Telecom regulator is accusing the Big 3 of cartelisation. Monopoly and cartelisation are dangerous for the economy as it makes the market inefficient. While the Government is selectively going after the Big 3 Telecom operators in India, it is important to consider monopolies in other sectors.

It is very likely that with so much diverse set of businesses, it is easier for Reliance to create multiple monopolies. While we look at the monopolies in the businesses, we cannot have a blind eye towards monopolies in the Government. The Government of India is monopolised by a few castes, and notably by the Brahmins, who constitute just a fraction of India’s population. As the monopoly and cartelisation in the economic system distort the market, the monopoly and cartelisation in the Government system distort the democracy.

There is no regulator to remove this contradiction, but only self-driven social justice movements that act as a regulator to curtail the monopoly of a few castes. The social movements in India are vital for the efficient democracy in India.

After Justice Karnan’s fight against the casteist Indian judiciary, it has emerged that the Judiciary is fully monopolised. Just over 140 families dominate the entire organ of Judiciary is a pathetic state of discrimination and monopoly. It means that a few families have the power to interpret the constitution. The important function of the Supreme Court is the guardian of the constitution, if the guardian is an autocrat and fully entrenched in the Nazism, then the constitution can be interpreted through these lenses only. No wonder that the Indian Judiciary could do what the people’s house and states house couldn’t do. It put a cap on the reservation.

The reservation cannot exceed more than 50 percent. The reason cited is the administrative efficiency. The students of politics, as well as economics, know that that efficiency is distorted by the monopoly. We have seen the ill effect of the monopoly of one particular caste in India. It has kept India into darkness. India should have soared upwards given its democratic constitution, fairly peaceful society, and vast resources the country is endowed with. But the Brahminical monopoly that mismanaged India is the major barrier to country’s overall development.

There is a cartlelisation in the society. The dominant castes come together and create cartels that destroy the level playing field created by the Constitution of India. The only way to stop the cartelisation is through representation. The other way is to create a common national will that must kill the caste system and make this country a singular organic society, which will pave a way to developed economy. So far, the RSS/BJP Government has failed to give any benefits of the “lowering oil prices” throughout the world. The Oil Pool is the major determinant of the GDP in India, and the oil pool is not deficient, thanks to the lower global prices of oil.

If it had been even a few points higher, the RSS/BJP Government would have been thrown out of the parliament after the draconian demonetisation. The economy, as Kaushik Basu, the former Chief Economic Advisor of India, reports that India would have grown with 8 % if there was no demonetisation. The sectoral losses are huge. There are increasing signs that the IT sector will see the reverse swing and the job market will nosedive in the IT sector.

The RSS/BJP is a monopoly loving system of thoughts and therefore the economic policy is conceived to create monopolies. The decision-making process in the RSS/BJP Government is privatized and monopolised by the so-called policy think tanks, but in reality, RSS think tanks, like India Foundation. The RSS pracharaks are given special training in the RSS academies in the Governance. Indian government is the public body and it should be worked through the people’s representatives and through the Parliament, but the situation seems to be different.

The RSS/BJP Government is running as if it is on the advertisement campaign for the elections of 2019. So much money is spent on the advertisement of the Government that a lot more can be achieved through it. Modi is promoted on every department’s websites and annual reports. The election campaign is unleashed without doing any concrete step by the BJP/RSS Government. In their first round of Governance, the NDA came up with a slogan “India Shining”. The NDA was defeated in the next election. What is the new slogan of RSS/BJP to attract the masses? There is no achievement to showcase.

Author – Mangesh Dahiwale, Human Rights Activist