People's Democracy

The corporate sector unanimously hailed the last budget the best that India has ever seen. The `cheer-leaders' had then given the Vajpayee government and the Finance Minister 9.75 out of 10 marks. The same enthusiastic faces now appear gloomy on the electronic media. The reason is not far to seek. The latest statistics put out by the Central Statistics Organisation (CSO) has shown that industrial production has grown by a mere 2.7 per cent in April this year compared to a 6.5 per cent growth last year.

The euphoria generated over the budget was matched by the Prime Minister calling for the doubling of India's per capita income in a decade and for a growth rate of 10 per cent. Those of us who have questioned these premises were rubbished. Last year's growth was termed as "economic slowdown". The budget was meant to reverse this trend . Yet the opposite is happening!

The economic policies of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation are designed to mortgage India, on the one hand, and to impose unprecedented burdens on the majority of the people, on the other. In the process, foreign and Indian monopoly capital reap super profits. Greater economic attacks on the people and growing misery for a large majority imply that the overall domestic demand in the economy contracts. This leads to recessionary conditions where the economy is just not able to grow due to the shrinking of the purchasing power amongst the people.

This is precisely what has been happening to the Indian economy. Instead of atleast now recognising that unbriddled liberalisation and the withdrawal of the State from economic activity is the main cause for this crisis, the corporate world and ruling class ideologues continue to cry hoarse clamouring for more `reforms'. More liberalisation and opening up of the economy would only mean the greater take over of India's economic assets by foreign capital and repatriation of profits leading to domestic deindustrialisation. This, in turn, will lead to greater unemployment and misery for the Indian people.

In this context, it must be understood that the clamour for the changes in the Labour Laws to facilitate the `hire and fire' policy and consequent insecurity for the working people is wholly an effort to protect the profits of the ruling classes at the expense of the working people. With employment opportunities sharply falling, as revealed by the latest NSS data (between 1993-94 and 1999-2000, annual rate of growth of employment in rural India was as low as 0.67 per cent and in urban areas, it was 1.34 per cent), such changes in the Labour Laws will mean imposing greater unprecedented burdens on the people.

The reforms of the ruling classes means that we are asked to become unemployed today in order to achieve growth which, in turn, we are told, will lead to employment at some unseable future date. Such is the spurious logic of the reform process.

The Indian people are now clearly seeing that the reforms are meant primarily for safeguarding and increasing the profits of the ruling classes at the expense of the country and the people. The ruling classes want more of such reforms while the people want the reversal of this process. If the Vajpayee government continues to persist with anti-people policies, then it must be shown the door.