People's Democracy

The Week In Parliament

Subhas Ray

THE five-day extended winter session of the parliament began on January 29. This was the last sitting of the 13th Lok Sabha. The CPI(M) leader in Lok Sabha, Somnath Chatterjee, questioned the very validity of holding this session. The Constitution provides that the President of India must address the parliament before the beginning of every year’s first session. This was the first session of this year as the earlier session was adjourned sine die. The 1966 judgment of the Calcutta High Court laid that if there is a violation of this rule, the entire proceedings would be deemed unconstitutional. The authoritative book, Practice and Procedure of Parliament, by Kaul and Shakdher also approves this ruling. Somnath Chatterjee made it clear that no one can ignore or override the Constitution.

The first day of the session was adjourned after the customary paying of obituary reference to the sitting and former members of the Lok Sabha who had passed away in the inter-session period. The session saw the placing and passing of both the interim Railway budget, 2004-05, and the interim General budget, 2004-05.

Earlier, just a day before this session was called, the NDA government had announced a series of sops for the rich and upper middle classes. It withdrew duties on imports of gold and silver; allowed duty-free import of alcohol (likely to be used to woo the voters), duty free import of capital goods, including office and professional equipment for the service sector etc. Strongly protesting against this, Rupchand Pal of CPI(M) said in Lok Sabha that these concessions, amounting to more than Rs 13,000 crore, were being doled out in return for electoral support from certain sections. He also blasted the government for continuously denigrating and bypassing important institutions, including parliament. He objected to policy statements being announced outside the parliament even a day before it was to meet.

Exposing the government propaganda of a “shining India”, he referred to the Currency and Finance Report of the Reserve Bank of India, which explicitly stated that there are reasons for serious concerns about the economy and the fiscal situation.

FM’S ELECTION SPEECH

The opposition parties in both the Houses were critical about the NDA government’s decision to advance the elections. They attacked the government for doling out sops to multinationals and rich people while neglecting the poor in both the budgets on the eve of general elections. The CPI(M) members participating in the discussion on the budgets in both the Houses termed the finance minister’s speech as an election speech rather than the budget speech.

Speaking in Lok Sabha, CPI(M) chief whip, Rupchand Pal, ridiculed the government’s claim of the nation being swept by the “feel good” factor. He cited the union coal minister Mamata Banerjee’s announcement, six days after taking charge, that Rs 6,000 crore will be given for the revival of several sick coal mines and for improvement of social infrastructure in them. “But no provision is made in the budget for this. This is the way they are duping the people. Resorting to fraudulent exercise and duping the people, they are feeling good”, said Rupchand Pal. He criticised the government for not fulfilling any of its promises. He assailed the deliberate dismantling of the Public Distribution System through increase of the prices of foodgrains. He questioned why the public sector banks were not providing the stipulated 18 per cent credit to agriculture. The bringing down of interest rates on deposits, down to three per cent points was a blow to small investors. Rupchand Pal felt that the government’s policies were benefiting only the corporate sector, the big borrowers and the rural rich. Referring to the government’s euphoria over the capital markets, Pal reminded the observation made by the JPC that the corporate houses-brokers-financial agencies nexus has caused havoc in the capital market. He said the small investors were still staying away from the capital market. Describing the Vajpayee government as the worst government the people of the nation had to suffer since independence, Pal concluded saying the people of the country were waiting to throw out this government lock, stock and barrel.

In Rajya Sabha, CPI(M) chief whip, Nilotpal Basu, led the attack on the government. He demolished the claims of the government with figures and facts. He found fault with the finance minister’s claim of 8 per cent growth on the basis of the figures of a quarter. “Till the mid-term review, this figure was 5.6 per cent. Now where does this figure come from”, questioned Basu.

Right from 1998, if the food production has gone down every year and foodgrains are accumulated in our godowns, then how has this happened, he asked. Seven years ago, the foodgrains production was 211 million tonnes, which came down to 182.6 million tonnes last year. He lamented that today’s food situation is such that it is less than the per capita availability of food-grains in the period of Bengal famine and Second World War.

Turning to the serious unemployment situation in the country, Basu said the government itself has admitted that there has been a decline of 1.5 per cent employment in the organised sector, including the public sector. More than 8 lakh jobs have been destroyed in the organised sector. More and more people are still being retrenched. According to the Planning Commission itself, Basu reminded, only 9 per cent employment is available in organised sector and about 91 per cent employment is in unorganised sector, where labour laws are neither existing nor being implemented. So, we can imagine the plight of these unfortunate labourers, said Basu. He highlighted the gravity of problem quoting the following figures. 75 lakh youth applied for the 30,000 Group ‘D’ jobs advertised by the Railways. Compounding this situation, nearly 40 per cent of our small-scale industries have been closed during the last five years. Referring to the government’s euphoria over forex reserves reaching $100 billion, he asked as to what are the people getting from this. He also said the upsurge in capital markets  was benefiting Reliance and Tata, which have earned profits of Rs 23,000 crore and Rs 10,000 crore respectively. He said the government’s refusal to tax the industries and corporates showed in whose favour it was. Another indication of this was available when one looks at the loans being provided, said Basu. No farmer is provided a loan at less than 14 per cent rate of interest. But, if one needs it for a car or for setting up any industry, it is available at 6 per cent rate of interest, said Nilotpal Basu.

ON RAIL BUDGET

Participating in the discussion on the interim rail budget in Lok Sabha, CPI(M) deputy leader, Basudev Acharia, highlighted the fallout of the perennial shortage of wagons and racks in the Indian Railways. He said this was a contributory factor for sluggish growth in industry. He questioned as to why there has been less earnings through freight even after the rationalisation of freight charges last year. He felt the fact that today the average speed of freight trains is only 24.7 km per hour is one of the reasons. Acharia criticised the railways ministry for neglecting the safety improvement aspect. He said nearly 22 per cent of rail tracks in the country are over-aged and are accident-prone. This government has replaced only a few hundreds of such tracks. The minimum growth rate in the passenger traffic has fallen to 2.5 per cent from the earlier 6 per cent. There are over-aged rolling stock, like wagon, locomotives and coaches. Especially, the condition of the coaches was very bad with the passengers travelling in local trains or short distance trains being the worst suffers. Nearly 30 per cent of the coaches are over-aged and this government has no plan to replace these over-aged coaches. Even in this situation, the coach manufacturing units such as ICF and RCF, are getting less and less orders from the railways.

Basudev Acharia warned that the market borrowing of the railways, which stands at more than Rs 3000 crore, is gradually becoming a huge burden on the institution. He called for urgent modernisation of signalling system. He also stressed the need for building new platforms, as even big stations like Howrah were facing problems of dispersal of passengers. Referring to the unfinished projects, some of which were sanctioned even 20 years ago, he said as per estimates it would require Rs 20,000 crore to complete all pending projects. “But the question is where from this money will come? The ministry should treat this aspect as one of the priority areas”, said Basudev Acharia.  He also made an appeal that the government should comply with the court judgment that ordered the erstwhile coal and ash workers should be absorbed in the railways.

Dipankar Mukherjee in Rajya Sabha said the major problem in railways today was lack of accountability. The present government was encouraging this escape of responsibility by blaming any party or any state government for something or the other. “You blame the state governments for whatever happens in a train. But the responsibility is with the railways. You are only encouraging it to shirk its responsibility”, said Mukherjee. He referred to the prevalence of a sense of insecurity among the rail passengers today. The number of major railway accidents that have occurred during the last six years, do not enhance the safety factor. He criticised the routine constitution of a safety commission without any concrete action to improve safety. About the rail minister’s promise of creating 3 lakh jobs in the railways, Dipankar Mukherjee cited these figures. At the time of this government’s assuming of power, the total manpower in railways was 15.78 lakh. During the last four years, the manpower was reduced by 1.5 lakh. “Still they are making promises that 3 lakh jobs will be created. What is the credibility of this government”, he asked.

OTHER ISSUES

Basudeb Acharya criticised the government’s anti-worker and anti-employee attitude saying that even the payment of statutory dues amounting to Rs 1,974 crore to the central PSUs employees have still not been paid. He also cited how this government has reduced retirement age from 60 years to 58 years. Many retired employees who did not get their statutory dues had committed suicides, he pointed out.

The CPI(M) member, Tarit Baran Topdar, moved a short duration discussion motion in Lok Sabha regarding the plight of farmers, youth and working class. He charged the government of pursuing policies which were resulting in large scale unemployment. The farmers of the country were also seriously affected due to withdrawal of quantitative restrictions of imports. He dwelt on the severe problems being faced by the nearly 80 per cent of the rural population – who are impoverished, undernourished, and are mostly unemployed throughout the year. He attacked the government for so cruelly deciding to export our foodgrains at a cheaper rate even even while the people of this country are dying of starvation.

Participating in the discussion in Rajya Sabha on unemployment problem, CPI(M) member, Jibon Roy, said the fact that parochial riots were taking place on the question of jobs shows the gravity of the problem.

Saying that policy questions were involved, Roy questioned the very direction of the economy under the present dispensation. He criticised the government for not making enough public investment, for not having a sound technology policy etc. He wanted the prime minister or the finance minister to reply to these questions as the purview of the issue was larger  than that of labour ministry. He felt the government was rubbing salt to the injury of the poor and unemployed youth by declaring everyday that they are going to provide one crore employment every year. He said every statistic showed that the rate of growth of employment has been declining every year. Moreover, during the last five years around 3 crore people have lost jobs in the small-scale sector. “In the year 2001-2002 alone, the total number of workers who lost jobs due to closures, lockouts and layoffs was 2.78 lakh. Then where are those one crore people who are being provided jobs?” asked Jibon Roy. He said the employment in agriculture was also going down sharply. He wanted the government to make a policy decision to encourage optimum use of manpower and reduce the use of automatic machines for certain kind of works.