Wednesday, May 03, 2017

Political Resolution , 11th Biennial Samajwadi Jan Parishad National Conference held at Jateswar,Distt Alipurduar,Pashchim Banga



The Bhartiya Janta Party has recently won a huge electoral victory in Uttar Pradesh, a big state, after single handedly forming the Central Government in 2014; on the other hand the leaders of this party in power have played a huge role in handing over the country’s politics to the capitalists. The irony is that despite changing and forming policies in the interests of the exploitative class, this party in power still claims to be nationalist. For Samajwadi Jan Parishad two interests are primary, the interests of the oppressed section and the interests of the country. Our party clearly believes that it is harmful in the interest of the nation to put the interests of the capitalists above all.
Crony Capitalism and Agriculture
Even the foreign policy of the Central Government is in favor of the capitalists connected to the ruling class. The Prime Minister visits countries which are economically weaker than us and announces loans worth crores of dollars to them. These loans are given only to countries where the capitalists close to the PM are signing agreements to make huge projects.
The big capitalists in the country owe 11 lakh crore rupees to public sector banks. The government is not taking any steps to recover this debt. When the last governor of the Reserve Bank of India demanded strong measures in this regard, his tenure in office was not extended.
Self sufficiency in production of food grains and edible oils has been one of the biggest achievements of our country which is due to the farmers.  But the capitalists are also behind attempts to end this self sufficiency. India has become the biggest importer of palm oil in the world. The ‘fortune’ brand company of oil run by Gautam Adani has been selling edible oil mixed with palm oil and also given the formula to other companies, which is the reason that the palm oil import is multiplying.  The companies of all major capitalists in the country have started agriculture in mega farms of thousands of acres of land  in African countries and govt. of India is signing agreements with these countries to import their products. When the prices of Arhar/toor Dal (pigeon pea pulse) were sky rocketing , Gautam Adani had  hoarded  cheap African  imported Toor Dal (bought for Rs 40/50 per kilo) in his private port in Gujarat and took it out when the prices rose to 100 Rs per Kilo. The import duty on wheat import from abroad was first reduced to 10% from 25% and then abolished altogether. The finance minister has announced that private companies will be allowed to do contract farming if they want.
The rising costs in agriculture have led to an increase of 26% in number of farmers committing suicide. The newly elected government has waived loans of small and marginal farmers which brings some relief. But at the same time, the top officers of Reserve Bank of India and State Bank of India have started giving statements against loan waivers. It makes it clear that the government doesn’t want to consider positively the demand to waive loans of all famers in the country.
The Government has turned a blind eye towards implementing the Swaminathan Committee Recommendations on support prices for agricultural produce. The committee had  recommended that the support price should be fixed at 50% profit on the cost of production. We should not forget that Narendra Modi had also promised to implement these recommendations in the campaign for the 2014 general elections. The SJP along with all the peasant movements in the country demands that these recommendations are not adequate and a parity should be made with prices and minimum wages in the Public Sector in deciding the price for agricultural produce.
Unemployment
SJP leader and economist comrade Sunil had said about rural employment that ‘Today India’s villages have become de-industrialized and there is no occupation except agriculture and livestock farming. Villages and agriculture have become synonyms. On the other hand villages and industry have become opposites. Where there are villages there are no industries and where there are industries there are no villages. This condition is bad and is a legacy of colonial times.’ An open conspiracy has begun to finish the sectors providing the most number of employment after agriculture- handloom industry, cottage industries, small scale industries and forest dependent means of employment. The law which actually implemented the theory that decentralization gives employment to more people with less capital was made completely toothless in April 2015. When actually only 20 products had remained reserved for production solely by small scale industries under the manufacturing policy. In 1977 the Janta Party Government had reserved 807 products for production solely by small scale industries under the clear policy of not letting big industries produce products which could be produced at a small scale. This policy was against the conditions imposed by the World Bank and therefore the list was repeatedly shrunk after 1991. With the inflating balloon of foreign currency and the ‘reform’ of balance of payment came with the condition that quantitative restrictions cannot be placed on production. Due to this condition of the World Trade Organization, on 1st April 2000, 643 products were removed from the protected list.
It is interesting to look at the list of the remaining 20 products which was completely cancelled to end protection of Small Scale Industries- Pickle, Bread, Mustard Oil, Wooden furniture, note-book and register, candle, incense sticks, fireworks, stainless still utensils, kitchen utensils of aluminum, glass bangles, iron furniture of all kind, rolling shutters, locks, washing soap and matchsticks. Big capital, aggressive marketing and technique which prefers machine over human labor will soon devour these small industries which provide more employment.
The policy of Central and State level government purchase organizations to buy products from small and cottage industries only assures demand for them, now there are also  initiatives to make this policy ineffective. Let’s take a look on the other side. There has been a history of changing legislation and rules to promote big capital. One of the prime examples of government changing rules and policies to favor its’ favorite industrial conglomerate is the then Congress Government’s decision to allow only the Ambanis to import raw material to make synthetic thread and disregarding the reserved list of fabric to be produced only by  handloom s. It is notable that these policy decisions of the textile and industries ministry made Ambanis the biggest industrial group in the country, and before them cotton cloth used to be cheaper than cloth made of synthetic yarn. The permission to produce synthetic cloth produced on power looms has made lakhs of handloom weavers unemployed. Earlier it was only permitted to make ‘plain clothes’ on powerlooms and handlooms produced different colors and patterns. This law was made in 1985. Then twenty two types of cloth were reserved for handlooms under this law. The powerloom lobby kept the law stuck in courts till 1993 and when it was implemented in 1993 the number of protected fabrics was reduced to 11. According to a reliable study today 70% of the cloth which is sold claiming to be made on handlooms is actually powerloom  or mill- produced. 
In India 30 lakh people have got employment in information technology sector while 2 crore people are connected to the handloom sector. 18th century French traveler Francois Pirad di Lavalle describes that people from as far as the southern end of Africa to China used to wear clothes woven on Indian looms. According to him just one port in Eastern India used to export more than 50 lakh yards of cloth annually.
Along with implementing a policy to finish all employments related to traditional skills, art and handicraft the government is trying to fool the public by claiming to run schemes to promote skills through training.
The government has answered in written in the parliament about Government jobs. Central Personnel Minister Jitendra Singh has stated in writing in the house that compared to 2013, in 2015 the number of direct recruitment in central government posts has reduced by 80%. The recruitment of SC, ST and OBC has reduced by 90%. In 2013, there were 1, 54,841 recruitments for the central government, which were reduced to 1,26,261. But in 2015 the number of recruitments is cut drastically from 1.25 lakhs to around 16 thousand. The number cannot be reduced so drastically without a policy change. In 2015, only 15,877 people were recruited for the Central Government. 74 ministries and departments have told the government that among ST, SC and OBCs  92,928 people were recruited in 2013; which goes down to 72,077 in 2014 and remains only 8,436 in 2015. Thus the overall decrease is 90%.
Employment in railways will not increase between 2015-18. The manpower of railways will remain at 13, 31,433. The number was around 15 lakhs on 1st January 2014. Around 3 lakh  jobs have been cut. Between 2006 and 2014 there were 90,649 recruitments. In the USA the number of central government employees is 668. In India this number is 138 per lakh and reducing further.
The recent report of All India Council for Technical Education states that 60% of our engineers are ‘unemployable’.  Every year 60 lakh engineers are prepared in India. Their educational fee has not reduced at all. If they are unemployable then it is the fault of engineering colleges. How have they prepared so bad engineers even after taking lakhs of rupees as fees. There is no comment on that. Now when there are no jobs in the market, they can start calling engineers ineligible so that the market cannot be blamed. If 60% of our engineers are useless, the institutions where they are produced should be shut down.
Black money and corruption
What is more laughable than the claim of the government to finish black money while it benefits illegally the big capitalists. The truth is that a long time has passed since the news came of many Indians having secret accounts in the Geneva, Switzerland branch of HSBC bank. The names of many arms smugglers, drug dealers, and corrupt politicians from around the world were revealed. In this list there were names of many big industrialists and cinema stars of India. The government of India should have taken strict legal action against these account holders after the list was made public, but because these account holders were close to the government it announced an option for them to declare the amount publicly.
Another list has also been made public of corrupt politicians and illegal traders, smugglers from around the world who have accounts in the country of Panama. After this news leaked, there were huge outcries in countries like Russia and Pakistan. In India despite names of the biggest industrialist and cinema stars etc the government has not taken any strict action against them.
The government took the huge step of ‘demonetization’ with the claim of ending black money. The value of the notes which were put out of circulation was 86% of the total currency. This step led to an economic emergency in the country. More than 200 people died while standing in queues to get their notes changes. Despite this the people who had undeclared money in these notes were able to change or spend them successfully. The owners of these undeclared assets paid their employees and workers months’ worth of advance salary and bonuses, changed it to gold and dollars and through petrol pumps, and did not suffer any loss. The opposition parties did not enter the policy aspects and depth of the issue and evaded effective action against the issue. As a result, the government was successful in spreading the misconception among the common poor people that this step will not harm the general public much and will harm the rich. The truth I that the government has not declared an exact number of the notes returned. SJP demands that the government make public all the related facts and should make small currency notes available.
When the Congress government was in power, the BJP benefitted from the movement to create a Lokpal. Despite this no effective legislation has been made for Lokpal.  A big part of corruption is the undeclared contribution to political parties by capitalists without revealing the source of the money. In this year’s finance bill, it has been made legal to not announce the source of this money and for it to be unlimited in amount. It is noteworthy that currently there is a cap on the amount candidates can spend in elections but no limit to the expenditure of parties and therefore the details of expenditure are not provided seriously. During elections the ruling party spends crores of rupees to buy each leader of the opposition party, therefore it has no interest in hampering the sources of illegal undeclared income, but is actually making laws to make it easier to furnish such funds.
Electoral Reforms
In the above paragraph  the contexts of acquiring undeclared funds for contesting elections and their uses have been mentioned. Samajwadi Jan Parishad is in favor of adoption proportional representation in the electoral process.
In India in each level of state/governance(like Centre, State, District Council, Block Council and Panchayat)  the mode of elections is FPTP (First past the post- the one who gets the most number of votes wins). The futuristic and popular mode of elections is ‘proportional representation’ which is already in use in 80 countries. The FPTP method is driving and increasing many weaknesses and irregularities in India’s governance and democracy. It is producing very dangerous situations in policymaking and change. Some facts –
1.      The Modi Government has got a majority in the parliament with the support of only 30% of the people. Around 60% population which is against it, has become powerless and with very little representation in the house. New developing  ideologies and organizations with small numbers find it impossible to reach the house and even keep their identities intact.
2.      In each state government of the country also, one small party has reached majority in this way with a small percentage of the votes. They also take many wrong and undemocratic decisions like the central government. All these minority governments make long lasting economic and administrative policies and programs with social- religious connotations. They promote extremist tendencies which often are deeply damaging to the country and society.

The party plans to organize seminars and publish literature on this issue.
The people who promote narrow and divisive views in Indian society, spread the ideas of the caste system, strengthen the religious fiefdoms, spread communalism to promote politics of vested interests; their politics is powerful today. If the politics of the weak and poor section which Samajwadi Jan Parishad represents gets powerful; these sections will lose their power and assets. We have to take this issue to the people. The interests of the oppressed and the interests of the country are connected and mutual. We will fight the politics of the rich classes with this kind of politics. We have to establish this objective firmly in our minds. Just like the Capitalist and Manuwadi powers have firmly established the aim of ‘Hindu Nation’ in their minds, which will definitely lead to the destruction of the country. This convention pledges to strengthen the politics of the oppressed sections to defeat the current anti-national politics.  
                                   Proposer  - Aflatoon , Seconded by Kamal Banerjee

No comments: