ONE of the catchy slogans coined by Narendra Modi in his first Independence Day address from the ramparts of Red Fort was ‘Make in India’. Like most BJP slogans, it was designed to stoke patriotic feelings to cover up its real intentions. It sought to increase domestic industrial production and the manufacturing sector and held out the carrot of employment. For it to succeed, three things were needed. These three were land, labour and capital. Over the last one year, the Modi-led BJP regime has pursued all three, with dire results for the peasantry and working class, and a great bonanza for the domestic and foreign corporates.

In the last one year the economic strategy of the Modi regime has become crystal clear. It is pursuing imperialist-dictated neo-liberal policies more aggressively and more unashamedly than any other central government in the past. It is bestowing unprecedented favours on the corporate lobby as a quid pro quo ‘pay-back’ for its massive financial contribution in the last election, and to gain the same kind of unstinted corporate support in the next election.

These favours to corporates are not merely restricted to massive tax concessions and other sundry benefits like earlier regimes made. The Modi regime is seeking to make major, long-term, drastic, institutional changes through legislation against the peasantry on the land issue and against the working class on the labour issue, as we shall briefly see below.

It is promoting crony capitalism even more nakedly than all previous regimes. The close identification of the Adanis and the Ambanis with the Modi regime has already become public knowledge. The Lalit Modi case which burst in its face last week, has blown to smithereens all its tall talk of zero tolerance to corruption, transparency and good governance. But this case is just the tip of the iceberg and many more skeletons are bound to tumble out of BJP cupboards in course of time.  

ASSAULT ON LAND:

LAND ACQUISITION

One of the most serious assaults of the Modi regime on the peasantry has centred on the land issue. Unable to get its new version of the draconian Land Acquisition Bill passed in the Rajya Sabha, where almost the entire opposition is up in arms, the Modi government has displayed its authoritarianism and contempt for parliamentary democracy by promulgating this land grab ordinance as many as three times in the last one year.

It is an irony in itself that the 1894 Land Acquisition Act of the British era remained in force in our country for a full 66 years after our independence. As a result of constant and bitter peasant struggles all over the country against forcible land acquisition, the Congress-led UPA regime enacted the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR Act) in 2013 with the full support of the BJP. The Left moved several pro-peasant amendments even to this 2013 bill, but these were defeated by the ruling class unity of the UPA-NDA. As soon as the BJP came to power in 2014, it made a volte face and brought in a new and drastic land grab bill and ordinance.

The anti-peasant and pro-corporate provisions of the Modi regime’s land grab bill have become notorious. They include exemption of the five categories of defence, rural infrastructure, affordable housing, industrial corridors and infrastructure projects including PPP projects, from: a) the condition that 70 to 80 percent of the farmers must give their consent to land acquisition; b) the restriction on acquiring irrigated multi-crop land; and c) the necessity to conduct a social impact assessment study.

Further, provision is made for the acquisition of one kilometre land on either side of a designated railway line or road of an industrial corridor. If enforced, nearly 32 percent of the cultivable land in the country can be forcibly acquired as a result of this provision. For the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor alone, it is estimated that seven lakh square kilometres of land in six states will be forcibly acquired from lakhs of peasants. The provision for the return of unutilised land after five years has been diluted. For allowing the acquisition of land, the term ‘private companies’ has been replaced by ‘private entities’, which covers a huge ambit.        

TRIBALS

TARGETED

With such a land policy of the Modi regime, it does not require much imagination to guess the fate that has befallen the Forest Rights Act (FRA). Enacted in 2006 as a result of decades of struggles by tribals all over the country and the pressure of the Left in Parliament, the FRA for the first time pledged to correct the ‘historic injustice’ perpetrated on the country’s forest-dwelling communities, most of whom were tribals. The Act promised to vest forest land in the names of tribals and other traditional forest-dwellers who were cultivating it for generations, and also to give them the right over minor forest produce. All those who were cultivating forest land on or before December 13, 2005 were eligible for the same.

The Council for Social Development in its report of September 2010 was extremely critical of the implementation of the Act and laid the blame for this at the door of the central government, most state governments, the bureaucracy and the forest department. The only honourable exception to this was the performance of the Left Front government of Tripura.

However, the union tribal minister in the BJP regime Jual Oram said last year in July 2014 that FRA implementation was making ‘satisfactory progress’. But the figures that he gave flew in the face of his claim. While saying that 81.2 percent of all claims had been processed, he also gave figures which showed that only 38.1 percent of land titles were distributed as of May 31, 2014. The fact is that over half the legitimate claims of tribals to forest land were rejected, and even among the land titles that were distributed, the land given was only a small fraction of what was actually under cultivation by the tribals.

During the last one year of the Modi regime, FRA implementation has virtually ground to a halt. In fact, the reverse process has begun and FRA rules that require the consent of the gram sabhas in tribal areas to take away their land for industry or mining are being diluted.

The Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Act 2015 hurriedly passed in March 2015 by the Modi regime not only throws open the mineral wealth of the country to loot and plunder by the corporates, but will also result in widespread displacement of peasants/tribals from their land. Under this Act, the government will not consult tribals or their gram sabhas or take their consent for mining projects. In case of displacement, they will not be consulted either about compensation or rehabilitation or resettlement, which has been left to the state governments and no Rules have been framed. They will have no rights in the mineral wealth mined in their areas. Finally, the amount of land to be acquired has been increased, and environmental clearances for mining and power have been indiscriminately given in forest areas, leading to even more displacement.

The cumulative impact of all the above assaults on the peasantry and on tribals will be disastrous. The AIKS has taken the initiative and several peasant organisations have come together to lead nationwide resistance to the land acquisition bill/ordinance of the Modi regime. This crucial struggle will have to be broadened and intensified in the days ahead.   

ATTACK ON

LABOUR

The other unprecedented attack of the Modi regime is on the working class. The prime method being adopted is to make retrograde changes in all major labour laws that were won by the working class after decades of historic struggles. The BJP state government of Rajasthan has already begun the process and it is being followed by BJP regimes in Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Haryana. Labour rights in Gujarat – the Hindutva laboratory - were already crushed during the dozen years of Narendra Modi’s chief ministership. Even child labour has not been spared and household child labour has been recently legalised.

With the initiative of the CITU and other central trade unions, a national convention of workers was held in the capital with perfect timing on May 26 – the very day that the Modi regime completed one year in office. The declaration adopted by this convention succinctly outlined the grave nature of the attack on the working class and gave a clarion call for an All India General Strike on September 2.

In spite of all the hype around the ‘Make in India’ campaign, factory output in the country was only 2.3 percent. The output of eight core industries declined by 0.8 percent, compared to a growth of 5.7 percent last year. The investment rate is 30 percent, down from 30.7                percent last year. In the last one year manufacturing, investment and exports are low. Price rise and unemployment are high and the agrarian sector is in acute distress. 

SURRENDER

TO CAPITAL

In stark contrast to its attacks on land and labour, is the Modi regime’s servile surrender to capital. The attacks on land and labour are of course primarily meant to fill the coffers of the domestic and foreign corporates. Apart from these two major policy directions, the surrender to capital is also manifested in other policies and steps that are listed below:

·         Allowing/increasing FDI in several vital sectors like defence, railways, insurance, retail trade and real estate;

·         Opening up national resources to loot and plunder of the corporates by amending the Coal Nationalisation Act and the Mines and Minerals Act;

·         Disinvestment drive by offloading shares of profit-making public sector units like ONGC, Coal India, NTPC and many others, to the tune of Rs 69,500 crore in 2015-16;

·         Boost to privatisation, commercialisation in socially vital sectors like education and health, sharply increasing their costs and putting them out of reach of the poor;

·         Dismantling of the Planning Commission and its replacement by the NITI Aayog, whose purpose and functions are unclear but which will add to centralisation;

·         Reduction of corporate tax from 30 per cent to 25 per cent in the next four years and abolition of the wealth tax; these steps directly favouring the rich;

·         Massive tax concessions to the rich, due to which the total revenue foregone is estimated to rise from Rs 5,49,984 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 5,89,285 crore in 2014-15, which is 43.2 percent of the total tax revenue for that year;

·         Directing the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority to uncap the prices of 108 drugs related to the treatment of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and HIV/AIDS just before the PM’s USA visit, this leading to a sudden and massive spurt in drug prices;

·         No action for recovering outstanding bank debts (NPAs) from corporates; no crackdown on black money; no plugging of the notorious Mauritius route of tax evasion or the use of other tax havens by corporates;

·         Lastly the big boost given to crony capitalism. The wealth of Gautam Adani, reputed to be closest to Modi, saw his wealth jump 152 percent in a year and he joined the club of the 10 richest Indians last year. Mukesh Ambani, of course, heads the list.

Under the Modi regime, there is no doubt that the rich will get still richer and the poor will get even poorer!

(To be Continued)