Dear Prime Minister

Subject: MINIMUM GOVERNMENT MAXIMUM GOVERNANCE

Swarna Bharat Party, the only liberal party of India seeks the liberty and prosperity of all Indians. We believe that a government must focus on security, law and order and justice. It is not the job of a government to run hotels and public enterprises.

Our ancestors firmly believed in this basic rule: जहाँ का  राजा  हो व्यापारी वहां की प्रजा हो भिखारी.

You have often used the words “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance”, which presumably mean the same thing, but the country has not seen any evidence of implementation.

The country is crying out for basic services like security and justice – which the people cannot provide for themselves; but your government is busy running hotels and airlines – which the people can manage themselves. Does running businesses constitute “Minimum Government”. Does making the Chief Justice of India cry and beg for recruiting more judges form part of “Maximum Governance”?

Please see the data attached, which clearly reveal that a vast amount of public resources are being squandered on running government businesses. At the same time, the government refuses to fund police and justice. It is not an acceptable excuse to suggest that some of these issues are State subjects. Central government resources must be provided to the States for basic governance.

I appeal to you to implement four simple things:

1.  Your government must immediately get out of running businesses. This will save the country well over Rs. 40,000 crore in losses from loss-making PSEs and banks. Even profitable PSEs should be divested since it is not the job of government to do what the people can do for themselves. All nationalised banks should be immediately divested. Present jobs should not be lost in this process, and the government should continue to regulate all businesses, as appropriate.

2.  Your government should deploy the funds so saved/raised to immediately increase the funding for core government functions, as specified below:

• Increase nation-wide police funding by at least two times from Rs.74,258 crore to Rs.1,50,000 crore per year, i.e. from around 0.6 per cent of GDP presently to around 1.2 per cent of GDP. Increase the number of policemen from 147 per lakh persons to 222 per lakh persons.
• Increase funding for the judiciary by at least ten times from around 0.02 per cent of GDP presently to around 0.2 per cent of GDP. Increase the number of judges from 1.3 per lakh persons to at least 5 per lakh persons.

3.  As a condition for increased funding, you must make State governments divest their businesses. In funding any branch of government, you must ensure accountability measures (including for all municipalities). The people of India want results. They want to pay policemen, judges, bureaucrats, teachers, only for results.

4.  Your government must immediately start implementing all reforms listed in our party’s manifesto (http://swarnabharat.in/manifesto including critically needed reforms of the electoral system and significant strengthening of the defence forces. It should be clear to anyone who reads our manifesto: that only these reforms can take India from its miserable Third World performance to the top of the world.

In a country where rule of law is supreme, the numerous communal riots and state-supported pogroms would never have happened. In a country where the police and judiciary are functional, people would never be targeted and killed for belonging to a particular religion, neither would caste massacres occur. Even the sensitive areas of the country, the Northeast, Jammu & Kashmir, and the Red Corridor would never be ravaged by insurgencies, as people would be free and secure, and would have no reason to revolt and pick up arms.

I therefore request you to agree to all our demands by Monday 26 September 2016. If you do so, my party commits to working with you to make India a Sone ki Chidiya – which is the logo of our party.

Should you choose not to implement these demands, we will infer that you have no intention to implement governance reforms and that you do not care about India’s development.

This open letter is also available in HTML, PDF and Word document format at: http://swarnabharat.in/openletter-26August2016

        Yours sincerely

     (Sanjay Sonawani)

         President

   Swarna Bharat Party

   info@swarnabharat.in