Distress of people as a v vote
ote bank for rulers
As the general elections are
fast approaching, the ruling parties
of every hue are promising every
conceivable thing including
‘heaven’ to the voters to enter
themselves in to state power. Such
has been the game of democracy
(parliamentary) played by the
ruling-classes and their leaders of
our country. These ruling parties
vying for the governmental power
have been the ruling our country
for the past 72 years, under one
alliance or other.
They have utterly failed, in fact
have wantonly dis-regarded the
well-being of the people-
particularly of the toiling and down-
trodden masses. They have been
hood-winking the people for all the
time with some populist schemes
or other slogans and pretending
as if they are the saviours of the
people. They have been time and
again talking about poverty and its
alleviation particularly in the rural
areas; and have been dubiously
claiming of achieving such a lofty
aim. Even one is talking about
farmers, their distress and
announcing attractive schemes of
uplifting the conditions of farmers.
But no one talks about the real
cause of distress of farmers and
farming or to undo such causes
and implement-pro-farmer policies.
Recently ‘The Indian Express’
which conducted a study of rural
wages over the past five years
using labour Bureau data came to
the worrying conclusion that rural
wages with for non-farm and farm
employment have grown only 0.5
percent annually in real terms over
the past 5 years. This is a serious
sign of increasing farm distress. It
is far more serious in the present
time when wholesale inflation in
food and non-food items is
April, May - 2019
galloping since it indicates that the
terms of trade have turned
decisively against agriculture.
Even another study published
in Economic and Political Weekly
in Sept 2017, too had pointed out
that the two crucial elements for
poverty alleviation in rural India are
remunerative farm prices and
increasing non-farm wages. For
the past five years there are no
remunerative prices to the farmers
or no considerable increase in
non-farm wages.
The figures released by Centre
for Monitoring Indian Economy, in
Feb 2019 show that the country’s
unemployment rate shot up to an
over two year high of 7.23 percent
and the actual numbers of the
employed fell by over 56 lakh over
the last 12 months. Of these almost
82 percent or 46 lakh jobless were
from rural areas.
Since
the
successive
governments have been zealously
implementing the imperialist
globalisation policies of reforms
and particularly for the past 5 years
the NDA government of BJP is
implementing ‘reform’ policies of
neo-liberal economy speedily, the
distress of -rural and forming sector
is on the rise.
An OCED-ICRIER report points
out to an actual fall in farm income
of around 6 percent between
2014-2016. This is not due to
slackened production.
The actual killer of rural folk is
the weak farm procurement prices
and denying even the statutory
minimum support price, which are
below the actual cost of production.
This is the result of the government
policy of withdrawal of state
procurement agencies from the
market leaving the peasants to the
unbridled exploitation by the
trading cartels. The agricultural
market yards are being privatised
and/or private traders are allowed
to open their market yards, so that
the peasants have to submit to the
conditions laid down by the trade
cartels. This led the peasantry into
debt trap. As the institutional credit
is increasingly being diverted to
agribusiness, the peasants are
forced to raise money from the
private money lenders. All these
anti-peasant policies are being
implemented by the Indian
government at the behest of
imperialist financial institutions like
World Bank, IMF and WTO.
While such has been the reality
about the ever worsening rural and
farm-distress in our country, none
of the ruling parties contending in
elections is promising the voters
and people, that it would pursue a
pro-people, pro-farmer policy of
remunerative prices, boost non-
farm wages and providing bank
credit to the peasants. They have
not announced any programme
that would remove the real causes
for agricultural crisis. Rather they
are pronouncing waiver of bank
loans for farmers which constitutes
less than 20 per cent of debt
burden of peasants. They have
been announcing the transfer of
money into bank accounts of
peasants as if the peasants are
begging for alms.
While such has been the
worsened condition of rural and
agricultural distress in our country;
another aspect of neglected and
undermined minimum wages of
workers has come in to light. The
statutory fixation of wages under
the minimum wages act 1948, is
exposed to be a farce.
contd. on page 22
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