Yet another New Year has dawned. Would it be a happy one? Nobody can predict. As for the last many years, which began with hope ended in despair by the year-end. It is the same every year — investment, foreign direct investment, FII pouring in and fast repatriation — flying away with profits.
Certainly there is something eerie about it. Sadly, we don’t change the prescription. The big corporates and rich individuals flourish. The marginalised get further marginalised. International bodies lament the trend but in actuality aid the process. It suits them. As more marginalisation of the poor means more profits. Growth has become synonymous with growing disparity and less disposable income with a larger number of people.
True, exploitation is a bad word but that is what the new world economics, including Manmohanonics signify. The concept of growth is based on disposing off human labour. The profit theory is founded not on the concept of sharing wealth but by amassing of it by the few seemingly sophisticated but ruthless management-culture-oriented persons. A statement by a corrupt MP summarises it. Said he, “Paisa bhagwan to nahi par bhagwan se kam bhi nahin” (Money is not god but it’s not less than that).
In this pursuit of “God”, the mighty forget about the lesser God on whose blood and toil they are thriving. This lesser God, the common man, is deprived of his livelihood for “GDP growth”. He is asked to have less for his labour, in the name of labour reforms, made to pay high prices for all that he needs food, clothing, shelter or loan.
The Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has the audacity to blame this poor man’s “increase in disposable income (spare money)” for the rising prices. He does not know that someone who does not have an income could not have spare money. The income of the small number of salaried class has also eroded under a compound inflation of over 15 per cent (calculated modestly) a year since the May 2009 Lok Sabha elections. But Ahluwalia sitting in his ivory tower is not supposed to know that.
The appointees of the IMF in key policy making bodies have turned high-profit-oriented money making enterprises as models for growth. If the socialistic model of abhorring profit was an extreme, the neo-economic model of worshipping it is yet another extreme.
It is not a dichotomy to see that as corporate profit increases – their balance sheets and Reserve Bank analysis testify — more and more people are put out of jobs. It is happening in thriving industries. Do we need any more reforms in the labour sector?
It is time to call for a check on the level of profits. The biggest consumer goods company Hindustan Unilever has had an average profit of over 30 per cent during the past many years. It has been eluding competition by buying up its rivals. Like the US, India does not have an anti-trust law. The competition law is more a showpiece and MRTPC has been rendered useless. The poor is not the concern of the corporate. The Government has to fend for them.
Undoubtedly, Government programmes have many things for the poor – from Rs 2 rice or wheat to 100 days of guaranteed work assurance under the MNREGA. It sounds good. Rarely the pitfalls, siphoning of cheap food grain to corruption in MNREGA, allow the poor to reap the benefit of the programmes in most States.
This is in contrast to what the Indian “bania” used to do. Somewhere they do it still. Charity has been part of their business practice. It is called “dharmada’. They used to donate 1.5 per cent of their income to it. In many places, free schools, dispensaries, hospitals, orphanages and shelters were run by dharmada. It has been more effective than what corporate social responsibility (CSR) is supposed to be. The CSR either is not there or if at all it is used as propaganda to bolster the corporate image and evade taxes.
Corporates do not like charity the way the desi baniya has been doing. It is not on radar of the IMF-World Bank economy. Though charity contributes to welfare of the poor, in modern economics it is considered a burden, a reduction of profit. The modern economic concept is based on the concept that one is not supposed to get something if he cannot pay. Charity is just opposed to it and based on the concept of empowering one who can’t do it himself.
This is how education is being made so expensive that a generation is going under the debt trap. Till the early 1980s investment by the bania and the concept that education has to be provided as a “gift”— vidyadaan — created the capable Indian seen in prime positions the world. Today this has been replaced with the idea that if one paisa is invested then one must get back ten paise.
It has made education unaffordable even by the many so-called middle class people. Profit-orientation that was anathema to Government institutions has become their policy as well. They have also reduced scholarships and free education. Lakhs of students find it difficult to continue with their courses and drop out.
Are we waiting for a recent UK-type agitation against expensive education? India needs to understand that easy affordable education has led the country on the growth path. There would have been no Manmohan Singh, Prashant Mohalanabis, APJ Abdul Kalam nor RA Mashelkar had there not been the system of affordable education in the country. Why is this nation trying to compromise on this USP?
Agriculture still employs over 55 per cent people (almost 60 crore). It is one of the robust sectors. But for the sake of making ways for corporate entry, the entire sector is being rendered sick. Our farmers are indeed capable provided they are supported adequately to make the country food sufficient. The Government policies are preventing it. A re-look at the farm policy to create a resurgent India without interference of the corporate is needed.
The New Year calls for a new orientation to create an economy that is based on sound political concept that supports the poor, workers, agriculture, education, keeps the corporate on leash and checks rising prices. The nation needs to globalise on its terms as China is doing. It need not be slave to western exploitative concepts. INFA