People's Democracy

ON August 20, in the debate on saffronisation of education, the BJP found itself alone in Lok Sabha, with its allies too opposing its design. Yerran Naidu of the TDP, which is supporting the government from outside, expressed opposition to any change in the syllabus without a proper discussion in parliament. Leaders of the DMK, JD(U) and some other NDA parties also opposed the HRD ministry’s attempt to implement the hidden agenda of the RSS in education. They accused the government of adopting a retrograde approach to education by including subjects like astrology and ‘Vedic’ mathematics. Dissatisfied over the HRD minister’s reply, Left members staged a walkout.

In Rajya Sabha, on August 22, the opposition charged that the Sangh Parivar has started infiltration in colleges and universities with the help of the central government and the University Grants Commission. The UGC, a funding agency, is now appointing Sanskrit-knowing graduates for teaching spoken Sanskrit in universities and colleges. It has crossed its limit by appointing teachers, thus bypassing universities that are autonomous bodies.

On August 21, the government was put on the mat in both houses over a patent acquired for Basmati rice by a US firm. The agitated members forced an adjournment of Lok Sabha, barely five minutes after it assembled.

On August 22, the centre’s move regarding job reservation for scheduled castes and tribes invited the opposition’s ire in both houses. Lok Sabha proceedings were repeatedly stalled on this issue, followed by adjournments twice. The angry opposition staged a walkout in Rajya Sabha.

On the day, the issue of use of prostitutes to elicit information from army personnel by Tehelka.com also came up in Lok Sabha. Some members disrupted the proceeding and forced an adjournment for the day. Hit by a series of scams, the discredited NDA government sought refuge in this moral issue as Tehelka reporters had secretly recorded and exposed their most immoral doings. The use of prostitutes to get contracts and curry favours, though an open secret, had never been recorded earlier.

On August 23, Lok Sabha passed the Indian Council of World Affairs Bill 2001. From the CPI(M) side, Varakala Radhakrishnan and Rupchand Pal joined the debate. Moving his disapproval motion against the ordinance promulgated earlier in this regard, Radhakrishnan described the act as unconstitutional. The same ordinance was issued three times. The full bench of Supreme Court has examined the question of re-promulgation of an ordinance, and whether the governor has powers to re-promulgate the same ordinance without getting it passed by the legislature. The court said the governor cannot do so. This is a clear case where constitutional provisions have been given a go-by.

The second point was: What prevented the government from resorting to article 108 of the constitution? According to it, if one house has passed a bill and the other house is not doing it, the government can advise the president to call a joint session to get the bill passed?

Opposing the bill, Rupchand Pal said the prestigious institution has come to a sorry pass; a deplorable condition is prevailing in all areas of its working, including its very rich library. Citing a parallel case, he said world-renowned historians were removed from the Indian Council of Historical Research, and pro-RSS men planted there with to disseminate their distorted version of history. Now the ICWA too will be a government-controlled and will become an appendage of the ministry of external affairs. Pal suggested that the ICWA should be a broad-based, truly autonomous body that must work as a think-tank. For this purpose, it should be made an independent body. He said many academicians, former diplomats and researchers are ready to contribute to the ICWA if it is an independent body.

Parliament had passed the Trade Unions (Amendment) Bill 2001, with its passage in Lok Sabha on August 24. During the debate, the CPI(M)’s Jibon Ray (Rajya Sabha) and Basudeb Acharya (Lok Sabha) described the bill as anti-labour. If the government wants to ‘discipline’ the workers, what about disciplining the employers, they asked. The mandays lost since 1991 till today on account of lockouts are 135 millions, four times that lost due to strikes. The sole aim of this government is to strangulate the trade union movement in the country. If it really wants to reduce the multiplicity of unions, it should bring a bill to give recognition to unions through secret ballot. It is in fact the management that wants to have many unions.

Further, some of the amendments would only help the MNCs to grab our industries. The MNCs do not want to employ any permanent labour, but only contract labour that is easy to exploit. It is unfortunate that the government is surrendering to their wishes. It is reintroducing slavery by amending the Contract Labour Act. Out of a number of recommendations by the G Ramanujam committee, the minister has chosen only one. The committee recommended labour participation in management, but a bill to this effect is pending since 1990. Why have the other recommendations not been implemented, the CPI(M) members asked.

In Rajya Sabha, Dipankar Mukherjee, CPI(M), raised the issue of dues owed to the workers of central public sector undertakings. He said the statutory due payable to these workers as on March 31, 2001 was Rs 1278.91 crore. The finance minister had given an assurance on June 1, 1998 that all dues would be cleared; the prime minister gave the same assurance on November 23, 2000. Nothing of the kind has been done. There are reports of deaths in some families. This amounts to law-breaking by the lawmakers. Mukherjee demanded immediate clearance of these dues.

In Lok Sabha, CPI(M) members forced the government to hold a discussion on the disinvestment of public sector undertakings. The debate was initiated by Basudeb Acharya who, along with Somnath Chatterjee, led a frontal attack on the government. He said the so-called policy on disinvestment talks about restructuring and revival of potentially viable units. But he asked: Will the government tell us how many potentially viable units have been revived? The government decided to bring down its equity in all non-strategic public sector units to 26 per cent or less. But it promised to put in place a mechanism to raise resources from the market against the securities of their assets; to adopt a systematic policy approach to disinvestment; to use the entire receipt from disinvestment for meeting the social sector expenses and to provide a safety net to the affected workers. All these promises have proved to be a sham, the CPI(M) members said.

As for resource mobilisation, they set up a target of Rs 10,000 crore in 1999-2000 but realised only Rs 1584 crore. The question is: How was this target fixed and why was it was not realised? Yet the government is out to hand over our public sector enterprises (PSEs) to the private sector. It is out to privatise even the defence equipment production and rail transport. VSNL is a profit-making unit and one of the best in the country. It too will be sold.

Also, whatever money the government has realised from disinvestment has not been utilised for social sector or for the benefit of workers, but for meeting the budgetary deficit.

There are also serious allegations about the method of valuation of the enterprises. The CPI(M) members wanted to know what the method of valuation is and how the bidders are selected. In case of Air India, there were originally 14 bidders. Then it came down to two. One of them was disqualified and thus only one remained. There are serious allegations about the disinvestment of Modern Food, BALCO, etc. The CAG reports said evaluation was not properly done in the case of Modern Food and BALCO. In case of Maruti Udyog Ltd, they gave total management control to Suzuki. In the name of swadeshi, they are in fact benefiting videshis.

Incessant canards are going on against the public sector. The government says it is a burden on economy and does not contribute to the nation. As if private sector companies are more efficient! Thousands of private companies have never declared any dividend at all. Umpteen times the government has said that huge amounts have been invested in the PSEs and there is no return on them. But the government has received Rs 1538.35 billion against a total cumulative investment of Rs 967.20 billion. Even if its share in profits is excluded, the total receipt to the exchequer comes to Rs 1282.25 billion, which is 138 per cent. Why their disinvestment then, the CPI(M) members asked. Very cleverly the government does not mention the LIC and GIC. When they were nationalised, their paid-up capital was only Rs 5 crore. But they have given to the government thousand and thousand crores of rupees.

As for protection of workers’ interests, the workers and employees of many PSEs have not got their wages for months together. Even statutory dues to the extent of more than Rs 2000 crore have not been paid to the employees who opted for VRS or who retired in due course. Is this the so-called safety net for workers? Interest rates from the banks and other financial institutions are also being reduced in order to provide cheaper loans to capitalists. But this is causing hardships to the people who have to live on their pensions.

Regarding financial institutions, we saw what happened to the UTI and IFCI. The IDBI and LIC are also facing problems because of non-performing assets. But these NPAs are the loans given to private undertakings that have deliberately defaulted in repaying. On the other hand, the government is taking loans indiscriminately. The country is in a debt trap. Hence the PSEs are being sold for a song. The CPI(M) members warned that the government would not be allowed to barter away these real navratnas of the country.

During the discussion in Lok Sabha on natural calamities in various parts of the country, the CPI(M)’s Subodh Roy said the government needs to take large scale measures to evolve a permanent solution to floods and droughts, so that states like Bihar, Bengal, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal, Assam, Kerala and others may not face the fury every year. Last year, all the MPs from Bihar gave a memorandum to the prime minister regarding the problem of floods and droughts in Bihar, but till now no action has been taken on that memo. Roy said he had full sympathy with the people of Orissa and Gujarat who faced natural calamities and, in their hour of crisis, all the people of the country came forward to help them. But when there is any such problem in Bihar, Bengal and Kerala, the central government does not come forward to help the people of these states. This is narrow politics and sheer parochialism, he remarked.

In Rajya Sabha, Jibon Roy of the CPI(M) demanded a statement on the rehabilitation of the MAMC, one of the five factories in Bengal which the government has decided to close down. The plant, alongwith its township, was built on 700 acres of land valuing Rs 5000 crore. It is unbelievable that a company with world-standard machinery cannot be revived. Its manpower has come down from 5000 to 1200. Roy said so huge productive assets and the township will only get destroyed if the MAMC is not rehabilitated.

With the Rajya Sabha approval, parliament has passed the Constitution (Ninety-First Amendment) Bill 2000 that seeks to extend the 25-year-old freeze on the total number and state-wise distribution of Lok Sabha seats till the year 2026. State assembly seats have also been similarly frozen.