Prominent left-leaning intellectuals who evidently endorsed the controversial “7-point action plan” as claimed by the Former AAP member and current Swaraj Party leader Yogendra Yadav, have now tied themselves in a knot as the glaring loopholes and flaws are discovered in the action plan that was supposed to provide an assistance to the government to fight the ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic in the country.
The contentious clause 7.1 which stated that all private property, which included bonds, gold, property etc ‘must be treated as a national resource’ to fight the pandemic. After one of the intellectuals, Ram Guha, distanced himself from the action plan, another liberal lodestar Professor Ashutosh Varshney, whom liberals quotes routinely to lend legitimacy to their harebrained suggestions, almost flip-flopped after endorsing the draconian expropriation of the private property mentioned in the clause.
When one of the celebrated leftist trolls raised apprehensions about the use of “revenue” in the clause 7.1 that would provide unbridled powers to government, Varshney initially defended the tendentious clause by claiming “I understand the right to property, but what, according to you, are the rights of the migrant poor?”
Subsequently, the President of the Editors Guild of India, Shekhar Gupta, chimed in, expressing his shock over Professor Varshney’s stance and questioned him if he had read the clause carefully before endorsing it.
“Intriguing, @ProfVarshney….don’t think even Bernie Sanders & Jeremy Corbyn would go that far…Hand on your heart: did you read the statement carefully before endorsing it?” Gupta tweeted.
However, Gupta’s intervention served as a trigger for Professor Varshney to hedge his bets and remain non-committal after having endorsed the expropriation of private property by the government. Echoing Guha, Varshney, too, claimed that the clause which he signed was profoundly different than what it is now in the action plan proposed by Yogendra Yadav.
“You know @ShekharGupta my economic philosophy. I don’t support Sanders and Corbin. The statement presented to me had no expropriation. It was only about higher revenue-raising in a time of crisis. Unclear what happened since I signed. It is 2am in Boston.Will check when I get up,” Varshney tweeted.
Ram Guha distanced himself from “7-point action plan”
Self-proclaimed intellectual Ram Guha was one of the earliest proponents of the juvenile action plan, also withdrew his endorsement after being mocked by the netizens for his support to the controversial clause of 7.1 that allowed the government to take hold of the private properties to raise revenue in its bid to lift the country out of coronavirus induced economic inertia.
Ramchandra Guha took to Twitter to announce that the clause that was presented to him during the discussion and the clause that was finally printed were vastly different, referring to clause 7.1.
The published version of the clause was ‘radically different’ according to Ramchandra Guha. The published version of Clause 7.1 says, “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.” Guha claimed that he had not endorsed this version.
