Onward to ‘Samuhik Jagaran’

It is more than seventy years since we attained Independence from British rule. We, the people of India, fought the British for over a hundred years to gain Independence. It was not a struggle by one individual or one party. The toiling people of the country, the working class, peasants, adivasis etc were in the forefront of the struggle in many parts. Along with their struggles against economic exploitation and feudal oppression they also fought colonial rule which was reinforcing such exploitation and oppression.

When our forefathers fought against the British colonial rulers, then considered invincible, they had a vision for the future of the country, the future of their children, grand children and great grandchildren. Hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, youth, students, women who fought for Independence did not hesitate to sacrifice everything they had – their properties, their youth, their families and their lives, for this vision. They visualised an Independent India which would make great strides wiping out illiteracy, poverty, inequalities, unemployment and oppression of any kind; an India where all citizens will have equal rights and opportunities irrespective of their caste, creed, religion or gender. They had the huge advances made by the Soviet Union under the socialist system before their eyes. The youth symbolised by Bhagat Singh and his comrades in arms and all progressive sections who participated in the freedom struggles aspired for a similar society in India.

These aspirations had their impact in the Karachi Congress resolution on Fundamental Rights and Economic Programme adopted in 1931. The resolution talks about a self reliant economy that would lead Independent India in the path of progress, providing decent standards of living to all citizens and safeguarding the interests of industrial workers, etc. The State would play the major role in agricultural and industrial transformation and ensure the benefits reach the poorest in society.

In 1944, when it was clear that the British would have to leave the country soon, leading Indian industrialists published a document, popularly known as the ‘Bombay Plan’. This document outlined the proposals for the type of development that they wanted India to adopt after Independence. This comprised a big role for the private sector, arguing that even all enterprises owned by the State need not invariably be managed by it.  

In the same year, the ‘People’s Plan’ was also published by three colleagues of MN Roy in the Radical Democratic Party. This document explicitly expressed its belief in Soviet type planning.

Thus at the time of Independence there were two broad alternative economic and industrial policies before the country. 

But the ruling classes in the country and Congress party that represented them were not for such ‘socialist economy’. They chose the capitalist path. The 1948 Industrial Policy Statement, placed before the Assembly by Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, the then Minister for Industry and Supply was more in line with the suggestions made in the Bombay Plan. Supporting this Policy Statement Nehru said that it gave industrialists ‘a fair chance, a fair field and a fair profit’. The Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 makes stipulated that only those industries ‘which are essential and require investment on a scale which only the State, in the present circumstances, could provide’ would be in the public sector. That is, industries that required huge investment, which the private industrialists could not make or were not willing to make because these would not yield quick profits, were to be set up in the public sector.

Among other things, the industrial policy also talked of reducing income and wealth disparities, preventing monopolies and concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of individuals and the need for the public sector to play a predominant role in ensuring these.

However the Government of India was careful to thwart any misconception among the capitalist class about its ‘socialist’ rhetoric. It sent a high powered team led by the then finance minister to the USA to reassure the World Bank and the US government that ‘The socialism contemplated in India does not, by any stretch of imagination mean communism; it does not mean state capitalism… It is a system under which private competitive enterprise has and will continue to have a vital role to play’. He was keen to reassure the US that there was ‘nothing in the system which should be repugnant to the social conscience of the USA’.

Thus all the talk about ‘equitable distribution’, ‘socialist pattern of society’ etc were mere rhetoric. Public investment was made in industries where the private sector was ‘shy’ to invest, and hand them over to the private sector when it was ready to take over. Drifting away from adopting policies to fulfill the aspirations of the majority of our people, thus, started soon after Independence.

However with the official advent of neoliberal policies in the country in 1991, the process of dismantling the public sector and handing over the entire economy to the private sector and the ‘market forces’ became part of the government’s agenda. The private corporates who have benefited through the patronage of successive governments at the centre and amassed wealth during this period were now ready to take over the economy.

This was also the time when socialism suffered a serious setback. The Soviet Union was dismantled. The socialist countries in Eastern Europe collapsed. The international correlation of class forces changed in favour of imperialism. Capitalism was declared the ‘end of history’. Neoliberalism as a response to the capitalist crisis of the late 1970sgained prominence and was being imposed on the entire world through international financial institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. By the 1990s, most of the countries across the world incorporated neoliberal policies as part of their programmes. Many of the governments including those led by social democratic parties in Europe adopted neoliberalism, which has now become the dominant ideology in the world.

The neoliberal policies initiated by the Congress led government gained momentum with the BJP forming the government with its own majority in 2014. BJP, which criticised the erstwhile Congress led UPA II government of ‘policy paralysis’, has fast tracked privatisation, dismantling of public sector even in strategic sectors like defence, railways, insurance, telecommunications etc, amending the labour laws in favour of the employers and curtailing the hard won rights of the workers.

The neoliberal policies seek to entirely wipe out the vision of self reliant economy, decent standard of living to all citizens, safeguarding the interests of industrial workers, State’s role in agricultural and industrial transformation etc. They have proved to be disastrous for the overwhelming majority of our toiling people. Despite all the high decibel advertisements about employment generation, unemployment and underemployment remain a matter of serious concern. Decent standards of living continue to be pipe dream for most of our citizens. Inequalities have been widening. While the BJP government aims to further climb the ladder of ‘Ease of Doing Business’ for the big corporates and business houses, it is not at all concerned about India’s slide in the Human Development Indices.

Employment generation is slack because in their attempt to maximise or sustain profits employers are shifting to more capital intensive technologies to reduce labour costs. Private investment in new production is not forthcoming because of slump in domestic demand. The prospects of exports have also become dim with many countries adopting protectionist policies and the trade wars.

As in several other countries following this path, the ruling classes in our country too are trying to thwart the growing discontent among the people against the neoliberal policies by diverting their attention from their real day to day issues towards non issues. They are promoting the right wing forces, who create animosities among the toiling people on the basis of religion, region, race, caste etc, divide them, weaken their struggles and thus facilitate the implementation of the neoliberal agenda.

The RSS, the guide and mentor of the BJP, and its various outfits are today doing this in our country. They are trying to divide people in the name of religion, caste, region etc. The other communal forces and religious fundamentalists are also gaining ground. These right wing forces seek to disrupt the unity of the workers and the people and weaken their struggles against the anti worker and anti people policies and serve their corporate masters. The BJP government is also increasingly displaying authoritarian tendencies and trying to suppress all dissent in the name of ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’. It is ironic that a government committed to neoliberalism, which has been handing over the country’s wealth – its natural resources, the public sector – to the big corporates, foreign and domestic, a government which is aggressively pursuing the neoliberal agenda that attacks the rights, the working and living conditions of the workers and peasants, the people who produce the wealth of this country, is doing all this in the name of ‘nationalism’ and ‘patriotism’. Nothing can be more hypocritical. Under the present BJP led government of Modi, India is facing an atrocious onslaught on democracy, secularism and the commitment to a fair and equitable society pronounced in the Constitution.

The fact is that policies that the different governments pursued since Independence prioritised the interests of the capitalist and landlord classes over the interests of the workers and peasants. The neoliberal policies that the government officially adopted in 1991 were to protect the interests and benefit the big corporates amidst the crisis that the country faced at that time. It is to enable them to further expand their operations and multiply their profits at the cost of the workers and common people. The capitalist system that our rulers chose to pursue is at the core of these policies. With the deepening of the crisis, the attacks on the lives and livelihoods of working people and the attacks on their democratic and Constitutional rights are also increased to safeguard the interests of the big corporate class.  

Realisation of the vision of our forefathers, the lakhs of toiling people, who fought for the Independence of our country, making huge sacrifices, requires that the basic contradiction between the social nature of production and the individual appropriation of surplus produced by the workers in the capitalist system to be resolved in favour of the working class. The working class has to take the lead in this struggle to resolve this contradiction, to achieve real Independence for the people. It has to unite all sections of toiling people, the peasants, agricultural workers, unemployed youth etc cutting across the boundaries of religion, caste, gender, region etc. It has to fight for the reversal of the policies and for the change of the system itself.

2018

Published by Centre of Indian Trade Unions