The 7 point action plan that presents guidelines to respond to the crisis created by the pandemic, put forth and endorsed by a group of politicians, economists, historians, and activists, is being called out for its utopian vision and problematic suggestions. One of the clauses that have raised serious concerns is clause 7.1 which states that all private property, which includes bonds, gold, property etc ‘must be treated as a national resource’.
This clause has been flagged for its totalitarian and socialist nature that seeks to deprive citizens of the right to hold property. After receiving flak for the same, historian Ramchandra Guha took a u-turn and distanced himself from the clause saying that he did not endorse it.
He took to twitter to declare that the clause presented to him during the discussion was radically different from the one published.
The published version had a radically different clause 7.1:
“All the resources (cash, real estate, property, bonds, etc) with the citizens or within the nation must be treated as national resources available during this crisis.”
I have not and do not endorse this.
(2/3)
— Ramachandra Guha (@Ram_Guha) May 23, 2020
Mr. Guha said that when the clause was discussed it read as “All resources within the nation are national resources, available for this mission”.
He added that the said clause had become “deeply tendentious with the major changes made without the consent of some signatories” noting that it had taken away attention from many ‘sensible’ suggestions.
This tweet thread has however been deleted.
Mr. Guha once again came out with a tweet with the rephrased clause put by Yogendra Yadav that says “the government must explore emergency ways of raising resources going beyond the usual set of taxes and levies to cope with the problem of funding large relief packages”, which effectively means the same. He said that new clause 7.1 was extremely appropriate.