contributory pension/insurance
schemes, which is never disclosed
or discussed. This is the more
vicious aspect of capitalist
economic policies of its pursuit of
exploitation and looting. Since
there are more than 90% of the
toiling people who are poor even a
small monthly contribution from
them will amass in to huge funds,
than any other form of revenue
earned by the governments, and
these huge funds came handy for
the capitalist governments to
supply them to the speculative
capitalist market activities and
funding to private big capitalists at
lower
and
riskless
and
responsibility less terms. Since the
contributory and receiving funds in
the schemes by the government will
be on high-side and the payment
will be low, due to very a smaller
number of pensioners that come to
entitlement, these contributions of
the poor toiling masses will in
actuality be the capital investment
for capitalist growth. Since the
governments abdicate their
responsibility to be guarantor for
the funds, the funds can be eaten
by big-capitalists and businessmen
(corporate) in the name of
bankruptcy as is presently
occurring in the banks in the form
of N.P.As and unchecked, unbridled
looting of public funds.
In the developed countries
such bankruptcies of pension
funds have occurred many times
deceiving the contributors (pen-
sioners) and their entitlements.
Already even the organised
sector employees of public
undertakings and government
employees of states have started
protesting
against
N.P.S
(contributory pension schemes)
and demanding to cancel them and
to restore their previous
entitlement of defined pension
system.
April, May - 2019
On the other hand, the E.P.F
pensioners have been demanding
for the payment of their just
pension amounts based on proper
calculations of their contributions
and orders by the Supreme Court
in various cases to give full and
justified and properly calculated
pension amounts for the E.P.F
pension contributions.
But the central governments,
which controls EPF have been
deliberately unheeding the
Supreme Court orders or the
pension entitles’ just and rightful
demand and is reluctant and
unwilling even to pay a minimum
monthly pension of Rs. 2000/-,
through huge funds pertaining to
the EPF contributors are amassed
and withheld by the EPF trust.
While such is the farce with the
pension schemes already being
implemented in our country by the
rulers, now in the wake of oncoming
general elections, the NDA
government of BJP has auda-
ciously announced yet another
general pension scheme for the
unorganised sector workers
claiming and propagating that it
had provided a social security to
the
marginal
workers
of
unorganised sector. Named the
Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi
Mandhan Yojana, the government
announced this new scheme during
the presentation of budget is of this
year in the parliament. The
government had provisionally
allocated a mere Rs 500 crore for
this new scheme, with a target of 2
crores workers to join in this
scheme every year and claims this
to be the ‘largest pension scheme’
in the world.
This too is nothing but a
contributory scheme, where each
subscriber individual has to
contribute Rs 55/- monthly to the
scheme from the age of 18 or Rs
100/- monthly from the age of 29
up to the age of 60 years and then
he is promised to be paid with an
assured monthly pension of Rs
3,000 from the age of 60 years.
If the contribution paid by the
workers is calculated by taking in
to account the core inflation over
the past 10 years, the real value
of the monthly assured figure Rs
3000/- comes down around to Rs
500/- in its real value at the time of
payment. More over a person
entering the labour force retires
decades from now and it is
unknown whether the scheme shall
not be winded-up in Bankruptcy as
is with the cases of NPAs of ranks
and their liability to the depositors.
Since there is no job security
to these marginal workers of
unorganised
sector
nor
guaranteed earnings, they not only
find the monthly payments too high
and in most cases the subscribers
will tend to fail in their subscription
payments and thus forfeit their
entitlement of the so-called pension
payments at the end.
We do not find such strings
attached to the pension schemes
to the poor even in the least
developed economies like Bolivia,
Lesotho and Botswana.
But the rulers of our
‘developed economy’ that is being
claimed to be nearing the great
powers of the world, have chosen
to deceive and hood-wink marginal
and unsecure workers of the
unorganised sector with such
dubious pension schemes!
The worker’s movement shall
be vigilant and more active in
opposing and rejecting such
deceptive machinations of our
rulers and ruling classes playing
against the poor, unsecure and
unprotected workers and toiling
masses of our country!
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