My Views today

27-9-2013

INDIAN ECONOMY AND THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

                          CHANCHAL CHAUHAN

She met me while I was in England where she was doing her graduation. She was really a beautiful woman who loved her country that is known as India. She did not like to settle in England and, therefore, came back to India. She could not get a job here and chose to be a housewife married to a military officer. She has two children. And she is really a beautiful woman but somewhat crazy about the political affairs in India.  She often comes to me and talks about things which seem to be odd as her interpretation of political developments and social affairs is always diametrically opposite to what we read in daily newspapers and see on the TV screen. I remember, she had laughed at what Dr. Manmohan Singh had said in his Budget Speech when he was the Finance Minister and pioneered the cause of liberalisation and globalisation at that time. She was right when she had said that the impact of that process would be felt in the social system when Manmohan Singh would not be in the seat of the Finance Minister. She came to me to say almost the same thing when the BJP Finance Minister spoke about his recipe to provide health to the ailing Indian economy. She asks questions that remain unanswered by the great economists. She analyses the speeches of the honourable Prime Minister of India too and laughs at the wild ideas, which ignore the glaring reality, caused by the market economy.  She wants to indulge in debate even with some western economists who might be having some remedy to cure the ills of the world economy. She tells me that the world monopolists of the capital have converted their capital into assets and manufactured commodities which are now lying in the world markets or in their own possession at their own stores.  The capital may be reprocessed only when it goes back with huge profit to the monopolist who uses it for further production or it becomes finance capital. But the social system that is built on the basis of private capital and private ownership ultimately leads to a situation, which in the terminology of economics is known as ‘recession’ or ‘slowdown’. Will the change of guards at the Ministry of Finance or the RBI bring in the remedy of the ills?

        She had predicted this situation when there was a boom in the share market in 1992. Now she poses the same question once again. “How will the capital invested return to the investor or the manufacturer while there is no buyer of the commodities manufactured with the world capital? The capital once created a large market by the emergence of middle class everywhere. This class is the only consumer of the goods and commodities manufactured by the world capital. With the onset of the new technology a large number of workers are retrenched now and then. General Motors and Suzuki have fired a huge chunk of their workers in automobile sector, and so is the story of many other sectors in G-20 countries today. In the recent past, thousands of workers in the Boeing Company were declared to be retrenched. Another company Erickson did the same about its workers. Thus a situation is created in which the purchasing power of individual members of these countries is eroded. 

In a country like India a large number of people are already there who have not been allowed to participate in any kind of production process. They have no ownership of land or factories, no job to earn good livelihood. Some sections of the rural poor have been given just sustenance by providing job for 100 days, but they cannot be the buyers of all the stocks piled up in stores. Those who reached the middle class level have purchased all that they wanted to possess. A car is not a loaf of bread to be consumed every morning; a colour television is not a bottle of milk required to be purchased every day. A refrigerator is not a cup of ice-cream needed to make children happy every now and then. Unless new buyers are created, the recession in the economy cannot be hoped to be over. No economist of the capitalist world is in a position to suggest the ways and means of creating a new market for all that is stored everywhere in the storehouses of the big traders.”

       “Is there no way out of the situation created by the world capitalism?” I asked her. The beautiful woman has her own prescriptions. She had told me long back that the Indian people would have to struggle against the old mode of feudal relations in the field of agriculture. Only the smashing of the old land relations could create a mass of new buyers in India. It is a surprise to see that the same prescription was once suggested by the World Bank. She said to me, “The Indian system is wasting huge resources on land consolidation programme and ushering in Farmhouse culture which will aggravate this condition of recession because large portions of agricultural land will remain unproductive.  If the land is given to those who are really interested in cultivating it and producing some useful crops, the new buyers will be coming forth as a result of new land relations only. The factories are not employing new labour force. On the contrary Indian capitalists are also trying to throw out the surplus workforce by modernising their machinery. Some of them are switching over to a business which is not labour intensive but capital intensive. All the owners of the textile mills in Delhi such as Birla Mill, DCM, and Ajodhya Mill have dismantled the mills and converted the vacant plots into real estate. So the participation of large number of people in the industrial houses is almost impossible. It is only land that can still absorb new sections of our population who can be converted into new buyers. If this social change is done, Indian economy can break the thaw; otherwise it will rot where it is stagnating now. But who will bell the cat?”

     The illness of the Indian economy is an open secret reflected in the speeches of FM and PM. The companies are floating no new shares and industrialists are setting up no new factories because there is no demand in the market.  Everything is on sale but no buyer is turning up.  No economist anywhere in the capitalist world is suggesting any solution to this problem. Earlier we had heard of Reaganomics or before that other formulae to overcome the problem. But now the U.S.administration that has arrogated itself to be the leader of the capitalist world is all the time busy to find excuses for attacking and capturing all oilfields of other countries to overcome the malady of economic crisis and to wage a war somewhere to bombard some countries of the developing economies and destroy some buildings, some machinery, and create a demand for new weapons, new reactors, new heavy machinery and overcome the economic crisis. The capitalists’ investment in destructive war machinery is also stagnating and the production needs be used in some war.  But the sensible people of the modern world wish peace and happiness. Now Obama joins the forces of Osama to attack Syria as George Bush did to Iraq with the same falsehood about Assad regime as was used against Saddam. The American President tries to help the American capitalists by dropping bombs on Syria to capture oilfields as they did in Iraq so that the recession might be overcome.”

         She went on criticising the capitalists who have created havoc and made the life of millions of people miserable. She continued, “Similarly, our own rulers in India are not caring for the ailing economy, but scaring people by saying that some ‘hard decisions’ will have to be taken while every day they are already taking ‘hard decisions’ and pass on the burden of price rise on common people. The Parties that support liberalisation and globalisation and follow the same policies such as BJP and their partners are trying to divide people once again on Hindutva agenda and propagating a rotten philosophy of the type of Fascism. They also indulge in “Hate thy Neighbour” campaign and indulge in rumour mongering about enemy occupying our territory.  The National Agenda of the political rightwing too does not deal with the illness of the economy and no suggestion to find out the answer to the question of creating a new buyer could be seen there. Only a stern face is promoted and faces never solve problems. Faces follow the same rotten policies that the present rulers do. The people are not fool, they know well that Indian economy even under the Hit-ler’s  stern face will go from bad to worse.”

     I expressed my difference of opinion to the beautiful woman saying that the Congress led Government might overcome the crisis and might be in a position to find out some solution to the problem because it has eminent economists at the helm of affairs. The Rightwing parties such as BJP or Sangh Parivar hardly have any eminent economist on their side to guide them. She, honestly speaking, replied in the negative.  She said to me, “The Congress Party too is treading the same path charted out by international finance capital and practised by NDA regime led by the BJP earlier. Both the parties believe in privatisation and neo-liberal policies imposed on them by the World Bank and IMF. Why do they prefer appointment of those high officials in economic affairs who have worked with the IMF and World Bank? You can see the recent change-over in the RBI. Both the Parties are hell bent upon a policy of selling profit making public sector to the big corporates and entry of more MNCs in different sectors that are not employment intensive but finance intensive. Why do the capitalists want to take over those Public Sector Undertakings, which are earning profits and paying dividend to the Government for the use of the welfare of the general public? Now expenditure on social welfare is curtailed. Is it wise to hand over the ‘Nav Ratnas’ (Nine Gems) built with the money of the common man to the greedy capitalists who will earn profits for themselves and their families only and retrench workers?  The NDA followed this policy; the UPA-2 attempted it now and then. The policy of privatisation will make a large number of employees in public sectors jobless. So instead of creating a new buyer the ‘hard decisions’ will reduce even the existing number of buyers in the market. This step will again have an adverse impact on the whole sphere of Indian economy. But who cares!” The beautiful woman stops her ravings when her younger son calls for her.  She rushes to her house. The poor crazy woman!

But I see some method in her madness.