People's Democracy

  THE WEEK IN PARLIAMENT

  Subhas Ray

AFTER nine holidays, the parliament met again on April 21. In this week, Lok Sabha passed the demands for grants for various ministries and departments. Rajya Sabha too discussed the working of various ministries. On the day, Rajya Sabha bid farewell to the CPI(M)’s S Ramachandran  Pillai and C O Poulose and the CPI’s J Chattaranjan, complementing them for their contribution to the  Rajya Sabha’s functioning during their tenure. Meanwhile, Nilotpal Basu has been elected leader of the CPI(M) group in Rajya Sabha.

In both the houses, members sought a code of conduct for chief ministers, referring to the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Ms Mayawati’s style of governance that became the subject of a debate in the two houses. She has singled out former UP chief minister and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav for having granted money from the discretionary quota though many chief ministers used to do that. She has also slapped many cases against Yadav and other SP leaders. This was one issue on which tempers ran high in both the houses. Yadav accused the UP chief minister of unleashing political vendetta against him and his colleagues. The CPI(M)’s  Somnath Chatterjee said the move to slap cases against the SP leader smacked of revenge.

PROTEST ABOUT HPCL & BPCL

The opposition forced the Lok Sabha speaker, Manohar Joshi, to adjourn the house for the day on April 24, amid strong protests against the government’s move to disinvest in oil majors BPCL and HPCL. They sharply accused the government of surreptitiously going ahead with disinvestment of the profit-making oil companies. Agitated opposition members demanded an immediate end to the process. They rushed to the well of the house, demanding that the attorney general be summoned to the house so that he could be questioned on the advice rendered by him.

The CPI(M)’s Somnath Chatterjee said the NDA allies, like the TDP, Samata Party,  DMK, JD(U), BJD, MDMK and PMK, had opposed disinvestment of the oil companies and the government was avoiding a vote on  the issue. Former prime minister Chandra Shekhar said some parties opposed the move outside the house but sang a different tune inside as they wanted to enjoy the spoils of governance.

ON CRISIS IN AGRICULTURE

In Rajya Sabha, on April 21, the government’s agriculture policy drew flak from the opposition during a discussion on the working of the ministry of agriculture. The opposition strongly opposed any cut in farm subsidies under WTO pressure and criticised the government’s attempt to push food imports that would give a setback to our agriculture. The CPI(M)’s Motilal Sarkar said the agriculture policy was part of the economic aggression unleashed by imperialist powers in the name of trade. As a result, the growth rate in agriculture is falling. The growth rate of jobs in agriculture is also sliding down. Import liberalisation has seriously affected our agriculture. The exporting countries give subsidies for their commodities while our government is lifting or reducing import tariffs. The result is that imported commodities like skimmed milk powder, edible oil, sugar, tea, coffee, coconut, silk, cotton etc, are flooding the Indian market. The seed market is going into the hands of multinational corporations. Fertiliser units at Durgapur (West Bengal), Barauni (Bihar) and Sindri (Jharkhand) are being closed. So the whole eastern region is forced to face a fertiliser crisis.

It is a proven fact that effective implementation of land reform measures can change the whole scenario of rural India where the percentage of landless agricultural labourers is on the rise. In its stead, the NDA government is pursuing a reverse policy. MNCs are now occupying large pieces of lands in different states. Even after 55 years of independence, we are unable to control floods and droughts. Due to a severe drought in the year 2002-03, the area of paddy cultivation shrank by 57 lakh hectares, of pulses by 17 lakh hectares and of oilseeds by 9 lakh hectares. Our farmers are agitated. It will be a blunder on the government’s part if it fails to understand their plight, Sarkar warned.

ON PLIGHT OF WORKERS

Lok Sabha has passed the demand for grant for the ministry of labour. From the CPI(M) side, Tarit Baran Topdar, Suresh Kurup, Bikash Chowdhury and Basudeb Acharya participated in the debate. Topdar reminded the government that it had some duties towards workers whose condition has, over the years, worsened. More than 95 per cent workers are not covered by any social security scheme.

Suresh Kurup said the house had a long tradition of legislating pro-labour laws. But the NDA government is bent upon amending all labour laws in favour of employers. The labour ministry has remained a silent spectator to the sufferings of workers in sectors like tea, handloom, cashew and coir. Most of the tea plantation workers are not getting their wages. In coir industry, employers have started denying workers their proper wages and other benefits. The same in cashew industry. The government has not taken any initiative to call a meeting of the trade unions concerned. There is no proper legislation or minimum wages for the fish processing workers in Gujarat. They are being exploited. The union labour ministry should depute somebody to examine their plight and working conditions, Kurup demanded.

Bikash Chowdhury said employers do not care about the interest of workers. In case of a dispute, even if a tribunal’s decision goes in favour of labourers, the owners ignore it. About six or seven labour unions of the coal industry recently went on a strike. An agreement was reached with the central labour commissioner and it was said that the decision would be implemented within three or four months. But even after eight or nine months, the said decision has not been implemented. The labour ministry should take action in this regard. Here, Chowdhury referred to the case of Dugdha Washery where in spite of a tribunal’s decision in favour of labourers, the owners are recalcitrant. There are thousands of such cases even in central government establishments where tribunals decided in favour of workers and employees. Lakhs of rupees are being spent and energy wasted to contest the tribunal decisions in courts. So the culprit is the central government itself. There are about 70 per cent contract workers in the organised sector and ancillary units. Even the labourers who work in jobs of perennial nature, are not permanent. Chowdhury warned that the government must evolve a consensus with the trade unions, otherwise the workers will go in for a nationwide strike on May 21.

Basudeb Acharya said though there are a number of labour laws today, many of them are being violated. The Payment of Wages Act is one of them. Even the workers in public sector undertakings do not get their wages for months together. In 1990, a bill regarding participation of workers in management was introduced in this very house when the National Front government was there. That bill has not been enacted and the concept of participation of workers in management, which is also there in the Directive  Principles  of  State  Policy,  has  not  been  implemented. For agricultural workers, there is no law to regulate their wages and service conditions. They do not get job even for 100 days in a year. Acharya then demanded a comprehensive legislation for crores of agricultural labourers. There are about 40 lakh beedi workers in the country. Many of them suffer from TB. Although a hospital for them was sanctioned two years back, no fund has been allocated. There is a law for contract workers, but that is also being violated. In Mahanadi Coalfields, there are 20,000 contract workers, but none of them is paid as per the Contract Labour Act of 1970. Regarding the cases involving contract labourers, it takes about two to three years when it is referred to the Central Contract Labour Welfare Board. Even when this board takes a favourable decision, moreover, the department does not implement it. 

COMMUNICATION SECTOR

On April 24, Rajya Sabha held a discussion on the working of the ministry of communications and information technology. Initiating the discussion, the CPI(M)’s Nilotpal Basu said several major technological breakthroughs have taken place in the field of information technology but the ministry’s policy in the last 10-12 years betrays great confusion in terms of target for an increase in telephone density and non-availability of adequate resources with the department of telecommunications (DoT). A new telecom policy was formulated to ensure private investment, but the fact is that the cellular mobile service is accessible only to a small section of society. Though the private sector’s contribution to the overall network has gone up to almost 20 per cent, its contribution to the village public telephony is just one per cent. So the policy is actually further marginalising the disadvantaged sections, making difficult their access to communication network. The growth of cellular phones has seriously affected the growth of fixed line services. In the matter of teledensity in rural areas, even Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are ahead of us. No less than 65 per cent of our people still live in villages. Unless we rush the benefits of these technologies to these sections of people, it will hamper our progress.

Basu also said after corporatisation of the DoT, a large amount of money that was earlier directly available to the telecom sector in the form of excise duty, sales tax, corportion tax and dividends, is getting accumulated in the Consolidated Fund of India. Today, there is no budgetary support for the new avatar of the DoT. The viability of BSNL has become a problem.

Many private entities are not in a position to repay their dues. They are also indulging in predatory prices.  The benefits of competition are going only to a small section at the cost of overall economy. As a result of private investment, he asked, are we in a better position to reach poor sections of the people whom we were not able to reach earlier? The growth of these two sectors, cellular and basic services, is not encouraging. We need investment in a manner that is consistent with our overall objective of transforming the Indian society and economy.

It is important to restore the government’s credibility. In case of postal services also, there is the bugbear of privatisation. Privatisation cannot, however, solve our problems. Desegregation of different activities of the postal department is necessary. We have to see where what functions can be performed on a commercial basis and how we can improve our work. This is also linked to the issue of our activities in the IT sector. Information technology, as distinct from other areas, is not an autonomous technology. It adds value to our existing portfolio of goods and services. Therefore, this whole concept of IT development in the Indian context has to lay emphasis on how we can integrate the sections who are not a part of the development mainstream. We have to actually design our priorities on the basis of our requirements, Basu suggested.