What The RSS Wants In The Budget

Despite a historic mandate, the Modi government will find it difficult to ignore the wish list of RSS affiliates.

- Anilesh S. Mahajan

As the new Modi government gets down to the job of presenting its first full Union Budget, all eyes are on ‘Dharmakshetra’, a building in New Delhi’s government residential colony of RK Puram that serves as the headquarters of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM). The complex has been built on a road named after Babu Genu, a pre-Independence star of the Swadeshi movement. An economic think-tank of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the ideological parent of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the SJM had guided the first Modi government’s stand on all important economic matters and tried to steer it towards what was loosely termed as swadeshi economics, though the government, despite their opposition, did open up several sectors to foreign direct investment (FDI), including insurance.

Today, as the government starts its new term and gets ready to present its vision for the next five years in the coming Union Budget, people who matter – from top CEOs to bureaucrats and academicians to economists – are reaching out to the SJM to understand its thinking on the direction the country’s economy should take for the next five years. The impression they have got after meeting both government officials and SJM office-bearers is that while the former might want to free up markets further and attract foreign capital to fuel job creation and economic growth, the Sangh affiliate is in no mood to relent. They continue to insist that the government should continue to focus on entrepreneurship rather than importing foreign capital to achieve these goals. Protectionism, it seems, will remain the order of the day, especially as the world, too, seems to be moving in that direction. A few days ago, India announced an increase in Customs duties on 28 US products, including almonds, pulses and walnuts, in response to higher tariffs imposed by the US on Indian products such as steel and aluminium.