In sharp contrast to the massive concessions showered on the corporate that we saw in these columns last week, is the series of policies and steps taken by the Modi regime to squeeze the people. They make an even longer list. Some of the glaring ones are as follows:

SQUEEZING

THE PEOPLE

·                     A concerted drive to kill the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is on. The tone was set by Modi’s hand-picked NITI Aayog, which roundly termed this whole scheme as ‘waste’. Instead of the required amount of Rs 61,000 crore for the scheme, a massive 45 percent cut has been imposed and the amount has been slashed to Rs 34,000 crore. The scheme which is being run in all 6,576 blocks in the country, will now be limited to only 2,500 backward blocks. As a result of this, the proportion of families who got work under the scheme in the last three years has crashed from 51.7 percent in 2012-13, to 46.6 percent in 2013-14, to just 15.5 percent in 2014-15! This has had a disastrous impact on the livelihood of agricultural workers, most of whom are dalits, adivasis and women.

·                     The tall promise in the BJP election manifesto made to farmers to give 50 percent over the cost of production as MSP to all crops, as per the M S Swaminathan Commission recommendations, has been flagrantly violated. The MSP for rice and wheat has been raised by a paltry Rs 50 per quintal. The same is the case for cotton and sugarcane, in which a big crisis is looming. For many other crops there is no raise at all or just a nominal one. The central government has, in fact, warned states that they should not give any additional bonus to their farmers, since that would ‘distort the market’! On February 20, 2015, the Modi regime clearly told the Supreme Court that giving 50 percent over the cost of production to farmers was not a ‘feasible’ proposition!

·                     On the other hand, due to cuts in public investment and subsidies, and the red carpet to domestic and foreign corporates, the price of agricultural inputs like seeds, fertilisers, insecticides and also diesel, power and water have risen, sharply hiking the cost of production and making it impossible for farmers to make two ends meet.

·                     No proper compensation was paid to lakhs of farmers who suffered tremendous crop losses last year due to drought, unseasonal rains or hailstorms. Over 180 lakh hectares of land was affected by these natural calamities. Another BJP election manifesto promise of revamping the crop insurance scheme was clean forgotten.

·                     There is a change for the worse in the institutional credit policy for farmers. Interest rates of banks remain high and most of the agricultural credit goes to rich farmers, ‘urban farmers’, agribusinesses and corporates. Poor and middle farmers are denied bank credit, throwing them to the mercy of rapacious private money-lenders who charge an exorbitant 60 to 120 percent interest per year.

·                     The budget for the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana has been slashed by half. A ridiculous amount of just Rs 5,600 crore has been marked for irrigation. The growth rate of agriculture has fallen from 3.7 percent to just 1.1 percent in the last one year and agricultural production is slated to fall by 5.3 percent this year.

·                     In view of all the above anti-peasant policies, it is hardly surprising that peasant suicides have shot up by 26 percent in the last one year of the Modi regime. Peasant suicides in India in the last 18 years have crossed the tragic figure of three lakhs. It is indisputable that most of them are a result of indebtedness.

·                     With the Modi regime accepting the report of the Shanta Kumar Committee in March 2015, the public distribution system (PDS) is being scuttled and the National Food Security Act is being seriously undermined. The Modi government’s other policies of reduction of buffer stocks of grains, slashing of food subsidies, introduction of direct cash transfers and steps to dismantle the FCI are the last nails in the PDS coffin. This will increase both the endemic hunger and the death toll of malnourished children in the country. Despite all the claims of ‘development’ achieved by neo-liberal policies, the per capita food grain availability has dropped from 186 Kg per year in 1991 to 164 Kg per year in 2012. With these new policies of the Modi regime, it is sure to fall further. The 2015 FAO Report on State of Food Insecurity has already said that India has by far the largest number of undernourished people in the world, their number having increased from 189.9 million in 2012 to 194.6 million in 2015.

·                     Despite all its tall claims of controlling inflation, the prices of food items and other essential commodities have flared up during the last one year. The most callous attitude of this government was seen when in spite of the international oil prices falling by 50 percent, it refused to pass on this benefit to the people. It resorted instead to further increasing the taxes on diesel and petrol. Although the Modi regime gained thousands of crores of rupees from this step, the people continued to face back-breaking burdens as a result of the cascading effect of high diesel prices.

·                     Some of the worst sufferers in one year of the Modi regime were the socially and economically backward sections of society. Just see the steep and unprecedented budgetary cuts on social welfare schemes during the last one year. Rural development saw a cut of Rs 17,000 crore; SC/ST Development – Rs 17,000 crore; Women and Child Welfare – Rs 12,000 crore; Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan – Rs 8,500 crore; Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) – Rs 8,000 crore; and even Modi’s favourite Swachch Bharat Abhiyaan saw a cut of Rs 6,000 crore.

·                     As regards all the other fancy insurance and bank schemes mooted by the Modi regime, the less said the better! The insurance schemes have been tailored to make them profitable for insurance companies. They are based on contributions by the poor and not by the State. The Modi government started the Jan Dhan Yojana with much fanfare. It is now crowing that 15 crore new bank accounts have been opened throughout the country. The fact is that 70 percent of these accounts have a zero balance and another 20 percent have a balance of less than Rs 400 each. Most of these poor and hapless people are perhaps waiting for the princely sum of Rs 15 lakh that Narendra Modi had promised to put into each bank account after getting back the black money that has been stashed away abroad! But BJP President Amit Shah recently dashed even those hopes. Hounded by journalists as to when the people would get the promised Rs 15 lakh in their bank accounts, he cynically replied that this assurance was just a ‘chunavi jumla’ (an election ploy)! That one reply is an accurate pointer to what the Modi-led RSS-BJP regime has in store for the millions of working people of our country!

But it has something else also in store - and that is its dangerous communal agenda.

NEFARIOUS THREE-PRONGED

COMMUNAL DRIVE

The RSS-BJP-VHP are well aware that all the anti-people policies being pursued by the Modi regime, as well as the corruption scandals that are beginning to surface, will soon lead to the backlash of people’s discontent. Disillusionment with the Modi regime has already begun, especially due to the cynical array of promises made during the election campaign.

And that is precisely why the RSS-BJP-VHP have been pursuing their parallel agenda of constantly stirring up the communal cauldron with even greater vigour after the Modi regime came to power. This is clearly meant to divert the masses from the real issues that affect them in their daily lives and to splinter the emerging unity of the working people.

This is being done in three ways. The first is to actually unleash communal violence by targeting Muslims and Christians through intense localised communal riots and attacks; and to run concerted and widespread hate campaigns against the ‘other’ (read minorities) with the time-worn semi-fascist aim of expanding their base in the majority community. The second is the capture of institutions in vital sectors like education, history, culture, science and the media, not only by appointing third-rate people hand-picked by the RSS to head them, but also by running a virulently communal, obscurantist and reactionary ideological campaign in all these fields to win over the minds of the people. And the third is to infiltrate the key organs of the State like the bureaucracy, judiciary, police and security forces. With a clear majority in the Lok Sabha for the first time, the BJP-RSS-VHP have embarked on this nefarious three-pronged drive to attain their aim of a Hindu Rashtra.

COMMUNAL

VIOLENCE

The communal violence of the Sangh Parivar, as we saw in this piece earlier, began two years before the 2014 general election and it culminated in the heinous Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013. Both these aspects have got a big boost in the last one year. Perhaps the first victim was a young IT professional Mohsin Shaikh from Solapur who was killed by the Hindu Rashtra Sena in Pune on June 4 within ten days of the swearing-in of the Modi government. This was followed by SMSs that exalted that “the first wicket has fallen”! The two communally divisive campaigns of Love Jihad and Ghar Wapsi incited by the Sangh Parivar have increased communal tensions and social schisms throughout the country. The attacks on mosques and clerics, churches and pastors in several states, and the gang-rape of nuns in TMC-ruled West Bengal have shocked India and the world.

Last month, an extensively documented 194-page report titled “365 Days: Democracy and Secularism under the Modi Regime” published by Anhad was released in Mumbai. The press statement announcing its release had some extracts from the report. It said:

“At least 43 deaths, 212 cases targeting Christians and 175 cases targeting Muslims, 234 cases of hate speech have been recorded between May 26, 2014 and June 2015, marking almost one year of the NDA government of Mr Narendra Modi. The number of dead is other than the 108 killed in Assam in attacks on Muslims by armed tribal political groups. Over 90 percent of the cases recorded in this report are over and above the 600 cases documented by the Indian Express investigative series in August 2014.

 “In the very first few weeks of the new government, by its own admission, 113 communal incidents took place in various parts of the country during just the two months May-June 2014, in which 15 people were killed and 318 others were injured.”

The assassination of the senior CPI leader Govind Pansare at Kolhapur in Maharashtra in February 2015, preceded by the similar assassination of the senior socialist leader and rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in August 2013, is widely believed to be the handiwork of communal elements. Not surprisingly, there has been no headway whatsoever in the investigations of these dastardly murders and no one has been nabbed to date.

HATE

CAMPAIGN

The instances of the poisonous hate campaign indulged in by some BJP union ministers and MPs and top RSS-VHP functionaries, combined with the deafening silence on them of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have set the tone for inciting communal tension and violence.  

In the election campaign itself Giriraj Singh declared that, “Those not voting for Modi should go to Pakistan.” He was promptly rewarded by making him a minister. The result was his racist remarks in bad taste. Another BJP minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti declared in a rally in Delhi that, “It is for you to decide whether the government will be run by Ramzaadon (sons of Ram) or by Haramzaadon (sons of illegitimacy or bastards).” BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj labelled madrassas as “hubs of terror” and exhorted Hindu women to bear four children. Other ‘luminaries’ of the Sangh Parivar increased this to ten children. Adding to this, Sadhvi Deva Thakur said that Muslims and Christians should be forcibly sterilised.

A BJP MP Yogi Adityanath said, “For every Hindu converted, 100 Muslim girls will be converted as retaliation.” The same man said that, “Mosques should be converted into dens of pigs.” Subramaniam Swamy declared that, “God lives in temples alone, not in mosques or churches.” Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut called for revoking the voting rights of Muslims and also demanded the removal of the word “secular” from the preamble of the Constitution.

In a condemnable travesty of history, BJP MP Sakshi Maharaj called Nathuram Godse, Mahatma Gandhi's assassin, as a “patriot” and “martyr”. The Hindu Mahasabha gave a call for erecting statues of Nathuram Godse and installing them in Hindu temples. Gopal Krishnan from Kerala wrote in the RSS mouthpiece Kesri that “Godse chose the wrong target – instead of Gandhi he should have killed Nehru.”

The BJP-Shiv Sena-run Maharashtra state government’s beef ban and its withdrawal of reservation for Muslims are also part of the same hate campaign against the minorities.

All this outpouring of venomous hatred is leading to the strengthening of minority communalism as represented by the MIM, Muslim League, Jamaat-e-Islami and others.

BAIL TO COMMUNAL CRIMINALS,

HOUNDING OF SECULARISTS

Maya Kodnani, a former minister in Modi’s Gujarat state government, was convicted for 28 years for leading the brutal slaughter of Naroda Patiya of 2002 in which 97 people, including 36 women and 35 children, were killed. She was released on bail in July 2014, two months after the Modi regime came to power at the centre. Her co-conspirator Babu Bajrangi, who was also serving an extended life term, was also released on bail in April 2015.

A notorious senior police officer D G Vanzara, who is suspected of fake encounter killings of Sameer Khan (shot dead September 2002), Sadik Jamal (killed 2003), the teenager girl Ishrat Jahan and three others (shot dead June 15, 2004), Sohrabuddin Sheikh (shot dead November 2005), Sheikh's wife Kausar Bi (poisoned and body burned in Vanzara's farmhouse) and Tulsiram Prajapati (killed in December 2006), was released on bail in February 2015.

On the other hand, brave police officers Rahul Sharma and Rajnish Rai face a barrage of charges. Another upright police officer Sanjeev Bhatt remains suspended. Teesta Setalvad, who has courageously pursued legal battles for justice of the survivors of the 2002 Gujarat massacre, is being hounded. She escaped imminent arrest only through the intervention of the Supreme Court. Organisations like Sabrang Trust, Citizens for Justice and Peace, INSAF, People's Watch, Greenpeace India and others are being targeted, maligned and harassed.  

The chilling message that is being sent out to the country by the Modi regime through the release of ace communal criminals and the hounding of secular activists can be easily seen.

CAPTURE OF

INSTITUTIONS

The appointment of third-rate RSS representatives Y Sudarshan Rao as chairman of ICHR, Gajendra Chouhan as chairman of FTII, Dinanath Batra as educational advisor to the Haryana government, coupled with the removal or resignation of renowned secular intellectuals like Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar and Sabyasachi Bhattacharya from the ICHR journal, Parvin Sinclair as chairperson of NCERT, Leela Samson from the Censor Board and many other such cases clearly show the direction in which the Modi regime is headed. Important institutions like the CSIR, IARI, ICMR, National Museum, Lalit Kala Academy and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library have remained headless for months, simply because the Sangh Parivar suffers from a dearth of genuine academic and artistic talent.

The attacks on and withdrawal of books like Wendy Doniger’s ‘Hinduism’, Megha Kumar’s ‘Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmedabad since 1969’, A K Ramanujan’s essay ‘300 Ramayans’ – all under pressure of Dinanath Batra, the attack on Perumal Murugan’s book ‘One Part Woman’ and the attempt to ban the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle in the Madras IIT simply because it was critical of the Modi regime are other symptoms of the Sangh Parivar’s assault on freedom of expression. But the most serious aspect was the arbitrary destruction of over one lakh government documents under the direct orders of the PMO.   

The past one year has also witnessed an unprecedented attack on scientific temper, rational thinking and the scientific establishment of the country. This includes providing credibility to myths and superstitions, use of official platforms for anti-science activities, budget cuts and crippling scientific institutes by political interference. Narendra Modi himself set the tone for this when, inaugurating a new Mukesh Ambani hospital in Mumbai he declared that, “The Hindu god Ganesh was actually a creation of ancient plastic surgery”. Ramesh Nishank told parliament that astrology was more powerful than modern science. Others claimed that ancient Hindu sages were well-versed in everything from stem cell therapy to nuclear tests.

These are all efforts to undermine diversity and pluralism and convert India into a monolithic society, based on the Nazi principle of ‘One Nation, One People, One Culture, One Leader’. For our country to survive as a secular democratic entity, to preserve and strengthen national unity, and to advance towards real economic and social progress of the mass of working people, it is imperative that all aspects of the Modi-led RSS-BJP regime are combated and defeated through massive people’s struggles and a concerted political-ideological campaign by Left, democratic and secular forces.