toiling on the land as tenants,
share croppers and agricultural
labours had phenomenally grown
during this period. The land
grabbing by the state to hand over
it to the Indian and foreign big
bourgeoisie also led to rise in the
number of landless households in
the rural India.
The ruling classes of India
portrays the crisis as the lack of
capital investment. On this plea, it
reduced the public investment in
agriculture and during this period
increased public funds to create
infrastructure that promotes private
capital, ie., allowed privatization of
existing Agricultural Produce
Marketing Yards (APMYs), allowed
setting up of new APMYs in private
sector, f unded cold storag es,
leased out FCI storage space etc.
Thus the ruling classes’ plan to
replace peasants with capital in the
form of contract/corporate farming
was put in place during this period.
It took many measures to promote
private capital (read: MNCs). It
allowed many MNCs like Bunge,
Cargill and others to enter into
foodgrains market and future
trading in agricultural produce. It
imp lemented
Rangarajan
committee report on Sugarcane
pricing which favoured the sugar
industry at the expense of
peasants. It promoted Genetic
Modified (GM) seeds, particularly
Bt Cotton, and showing it as a
model to raise productivity it
planned to allow GM seeds in many
other crops too. When resistance
came from the various sections of
people, the Ministry of Environment
withheld the decision for the
present. It conducted meetings in
various states in the name of
gathering opinions from the people
and tried hard to stage manage the
show. Meanwhile it rem oved
straightforward members of
Genetic Organism s Approval
Committee (GOAC) and made it
December- 2016
subordinate to the ministry. Then
without much fanfare it allowed
MNCs to produce GM seeds in
India in the name of field trials.
The
Modi
g overnm ent
continued the process that is being
called as reforms process, from
where the UPA government left it.
It issued ordinance amending the
Land Acquisition Act-2013, which
extended the power of government
to acquire land from the peasants
not only in the name of public
interest but also equally undefined
term public-private participation. It
has done away with the clauses for
social impact assessment which
identifies the number of people
affected and to be compensated in
addition to land owners. It is playing
the same deceit on the people as
the previous Congress government by claiming that the
compensation be paid four times
more than the prevailing market
price of the land acquired, but in
reality, it only pays the double that
of registered price in the sale
deeds.
Instead of taking steps to remove
the real causes for the suicides by
the peasants, the government
slashed the number of suicides by
excluding those of tenant farmers
and agricultural labourers.
Thus every step taken during
this period was placated a measure
to alleviate this misery of the
peasantry; in actually used to
alienate the peasants from their
lands to promote the corporate/
contract farming.
Thus the alliance of big
landlords, big bourgeoisie and
imperialism is extracting surplus
labour, utilising feudal as well as
capitalist market form of
exp loitation and throwing the
peasantry into misery, pauperisation and to suicides.
Industrial Stagnation
The main feature during this
period was acquisition, takeover
and merger of existing Indian
companies by the foreign capital
rather than starting new industrial
units. Despite the tall 3 claims by
the UPA government that the
growth rate will soon reach the
double digit level, it remained
around 6 to 7 per cent during this
period. Another feature was the
drastic decline of the manufacturing sector.
The world capitalist crisis of
2008 had its effect on the Indian
economy. The immediate effect
was on the IT and ITES sectors
which are completely dependent
upon the orders of the US and
Europe. This sector lost its sheen;
average