Support the General Strike on July 9 - Eleven Years of BJP Government : Working Class at the Receiving End

M A Baby

THE headline of DD News on June 19, 2025 read: ‘PM Modi highlights 11 years of workforce-centric reforms, cites historic gains in jobs and social protection’.

The report quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi as saying that the union government remains committed to “the welfare and empowerment of workers,” and that “India’s workforce has remained at the heart of policy, planning, and progress over the past 11 years.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. The facts, if the government chooses to consider them, speak for themselves. If anyone has truly remained at the ‘heart of policy’ under this government, it is the large corporate houses.

If the government genuinely cared about working people, India would be leading global charts in health and education indicators. But this is far from reality.

According to the National Family Health Survey, 36 per cent of children under the age of five are stunted (too short for their age) – a clear indication of chronic under-nutrition. Additionally, 32 per cent of children in this age group are underweight. Anaemia among women aged 15 to 49 rose from 53 per cent in 2015-16 to 57.2 per cent in 2019-20. Among pregnant women in the same age group, the prevalence of anaemia increased from 50.4 per cent to 52.2 per cent.

These figures point to widespread poverty, which remains the root cause of malnutrition and anaemia.

Contrary to the government’s claims that poverty has drastically declined under its tenure, a study by Pulapre Balakrishnan and Aman Raj paints a starkly different picture. In 2023-24, up to 40 per cent of the rural population could not afford two vegetarian thalis a day, while as much as 95 per cent could not afford two non-vegetarian thalis. The study further reveals that 80 per cent of the rural population was unable to afford a mix of one vegetarian and one non-vegetarian thali daily, costing a modest Rs 88.

In urban India during the same period, 10 per cent could not afford two vegetarian thalis a day, 80 per cent could not afford two non-vegetarian thalis, and 50 per cent could not afford the mixed thali combination. These figures starkly expose the depth and persistence of poverty in the country.

In contrast, the wealth of India’s corporate elite continues to rise unabated. The number of billionaires has doubled from 100 in 2014 to 200 in 2024. The combined wealth of the top 100 billionaires has, for the first time, surpassed one trillion dollars – a defining feature of the Modi government’s tenure.

According to the World Inequality Report, by 2022-23, the top 1 per cent of the population accounted for 22.6 per cent of total income and owned 40.1 per cent of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent owned just 3 per cent.

This widening inequality is a direct result of government policies. The tax burden has systematically shifted from corporations to ordinary citizens. Budget estimates show that the share of corporate tax in gross tax revenue fell from 34.5 per cent in 2014-15 to 27.2 per cent in 2024-25. In 2019, the government slashed corporate tax rates from 30 per cent to 22 per cent, but the effective tax rates are even lower. For instance, Reliance Industries paid an effective tax rate of 16.5 per cent in 2021-22, while UltraTech Cement paid just 14.8 per cent.

There is yet another way in which corporations are minting super-profits and expanding their wealth. Since the 2010s, the share of priority sector loans in the Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) of public sector banks (PSBs) has been significantly outpaced by the surge in NPAs from the non-priority sector. While the non-priority sector accounted for around 50 per cent of PSB NPAs in the 2000s, its share rose sharply to about 80 per cent by 2019. It was large corporate borrowers who registered the most dramatic increase in their NPA ratios during this period.

Between 2014 and 2023, under the BJP-led NDA government, banks wrote off a total of Rs 14.56 lakh crore – a staggering figure. The value of these write-offs has more than tripled since Prime Minister Modi assumed office. This clearly demonstrates that government policy is heavily skewed in favour of corporate interests. None of the corporates use the resources they have effectively swindled from the public exchequer for the welfare of workers. Instead, they channel these funds into profit accumulation and wealth expansion.

Now let us turn to the condition of the working class, the true creators of wealth. Between 2014-15 and 2020-21, wage growth in the organised sector fell to just 6 per cent, compared to 10.1 per cent in the previous six-year period. With persistently high inflation, real wages have effectively declined. Moreover, the share of wages in the net value added (NVA) by workers in the industrial sector dropped by three percentage points, from 18.9 per cent in 2020 to 15.9 per cent in 2023. During the same period, the share of profits in NVA surged from 38.7 per cent to 51.9 per cent.

Another major form of exploitation faced by workers is the failure of the government to enforce minimum wage laws. In most parts of the country, minimum wages are not being paid, let alone proper compensation for overtime. Working hours are being arbitrarily extended, with some states allowing shifts of 12 hours or more. These exploitative conditions reflect the systematic and unrelenting exploitation that workers are subjected to.

Whenever workers demand implementation of minimum wages and their rightful share of the value created through their labour, they are told that there are insufficient resources, a claim that is blatantly false. Consider, for instance, the enormous revenue the government foregoes annually through corporate tax concessions: each year, the government loses Rs 1.45 lakh crore due to corporate tax cuts. This figure exceeds the combined budgetary allocations for health and education.

If the government were genuinely committed to securing resources for workers’ welfare, there are clear alternatives. One such measure would be to recover unpaid loans from defaulting corporates and ensure that public sector banks are reimbursed for the people’s money entrusted to them. PSBs have filed 16,420 cases for loan defaults amounting to Rs 4,10,758 crore. Since 2014, the government has written off Rs 16.61 lakh crore in bank loans, primarily benefiting big business. This amount is nearly one-third of the entire Union Budget for 2025–26.

Many of the economic demands raised by trade unions over the past few years can be fulfilled if the government recovers public money from corporate defaulters and redirects it for public welfare. It is not just the workers who are being ignored, the government also displays indifference towards public safety. Trade unions have consistently demanded that the government not only enforce workplace safety standards, but also ensure the safety of citizens using public services.

A striking example of this apathy is the government’s neglect of railway safety. For years, it has overlooked the maintenance of railway infrastructure, putting the lives of rail passengers at risk. The tragic Balasore train accident (2023), which claimed at least 292 lives, brought this issue into sharp focus. According to a CAG report, the total shortfall in required funds for track renewal amounted to Rs 1,03,395 crore. In comparison, that same year, public sector banks wrote off Rs 1,33,945 crore, a clear indication of where the government’s priorities lie.

Instead of taking responsibility and investing in safety and jobs, the government is now appointing retired railway employees as volunteers, rather than recruiting young, qualified individuals who are desperately seeking employment.

Far from fulfilling its promise of creating two crore jobs every year, which should have resulted in 22 crore jobs over the past eleven years, the government has actually overseen a decline in employment, especially in the public sector. According to its own reports, employment in Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSEs) has fallen from 17.3 lakh in 2013 to 14.6 lakh in 2022, while the share of contractual employment increased from 19 per cent in 2013 to 42.5 per cent in 2022.

The same trend is visible in public sector banks (PSBs). The staff strength in PSBs dropped from 8,44,445 in 2014 to 7,56,644 in 2023. Overall, employment in government services and the public sector is among the lowest in the world. According to ILO data, it stands at just 3.8 per cent in India, compared to 12.3 per cent in Brazil, 13.3 per cent in the USA, 16.9 per cent in Argentina, 21.5 per cent in the UK, 28 per cent in China, 40.6 per cent in Russia, and 77 per cent in Cuba.

Social justice through reservations is ensured only in the public sector. Therefore, the reduction in public sector employment also means a reduction in opportunities for socially disadvantaged sections, as reservations are not implemented in the private sector. The demographic advantage we enjoy, with a large proportion of young people, is being squandered due to rampant unemployment and widespread job cuts.

To challenge these injustices, the working class draws its strength from unity and collective bargaining, a strength the government seeks to undermine. The introduction of the Labour Codes is a deliberate move to weaken the working class, ensuring it does not pose a challenge to capitalists or the government led by the BJP. Under Prime Minister Modi’s leadership, the government forcefully pushed the new Labour Codes through both Houses of Parliament in 2020. These Codes aim to trample on trade unions, which have rightly pointed out that the new laws dilute the remaining rights and protections available to workers.

The government has so far failed to implement these pro-industry, anti-labour Codes due to strong resistance from workers. However, it is now pressurising state governments to enact similar laws, and many are complying by passing legislation aligned with the Codes. Unless these efforts are defeated, we cannot safeguard the rights of the working class.

It is heartening to note that the trade unions have not limited themselves to economic demands, but have also incorporated the concerns of peasants, agricultural workers, and other common people in their charter of demands. As a party of the working class, the CPI(M) considers it its bounden duty to stand with the trade unions, which have called for the General Strike on July 9. All Party units will actively campaign in support of the trade unions’ demands and work to mobilise the masses for the success of the strike.

The Party will also expose the politics behind the attacks on the working class, and highlight the urgency of rallying alongside workers. These attacks are not merely on workers’ rights, they are an attack on the democratic character of the country. Moreover, the ruling classes through their representatives – the RSS-BJP – are trying to break the unity of working class and other toiling sections by spreading communal hatred. This is part of the ruling classes push towards neo-fascism, where the right to dissent and protest against capitalist exploitation is being systematically denied. This makes it all the more important for the CPI(M) to stand firmly with the working class in its struggle against the pro-corporate, anti-poor BJP-led government.

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