Farmer ’ s Woes Empty Promises - Elusive Slogans
Rs . 15,000 / - month disclosing the poor quality of jobs reducing them on par with informal workers .
Various surveys like Lokniti CSDS , India Today , Centre for monitoring Indian economy point out the very same facts mentioned above about job creation , quality of jobs and unemployment in India .
When it comes to the selfemployment of MUDRA beneficiaries again it is a fallacious claim . In accordance with the 6 th economic census in 2013-14 while 58.5 millions are supposed to be the total self-established establishments , 41.97 million of them are only own-account enterprises ; which means the Mudra loan receiver alone is self-employed without employing another person is the enterprise . Thus 72 % of the MUDRA beneficiaries are nothing but simple workers that took up survival employment lacking no other opportunity to find out any job ; and are as insecure and vulnerable as unorganized sector workers to the viles of the market forces . It is a bitter truth that 85 % of the self-employed under MUDRA scheme are earning lesser than Rs . 10,000 / - per month exposes the hollowness the quality of jobs claimed to have been created under MUDRA scheme selfemployment .
Again in the name of developing skills among workers the NDA rulers have grandly started the so called skill India ( PM ) CVY scheme . Even those few that have been ‘ skilled ’ under this scheme are left unemployed and now NITI Ayog proposes to make them ‘ self-em ployed ’ under MUDRA-Loan scheme .!
This is the epoch where the NDA rulers consider ‘ FRYING PAKODAS ’ OR TENDING / HERDING COWS as a substantial employ-ment / jobs , it will be foolishness to expect job creation that too of a fair quality by them . They only just sell lofty slogans in lieu of creating jobs and are skilled in hood-winking the people by raising sentiments of communalism and religiosity to step in to governmental power .
The desperate need of the day of the people of our country is respectable , dignified and secured living opportunity by working . The rulers who are devoted to sub serve the interests of the imperialism and its neo-liberal economic policy of exploitation cannot and will not fulfil this basic need and aspiration of the people . By constantly fighting against imperialism with unwavering unity of the unemployed and the other sections of the working people only the aspirations of respectable , dignified and secured employment can be achieved !
Farmer ’ s Woes Empty Promises - Elusive Slogans
The NDA government headed by Narendra Modi has been parroting that it is taking all measures to double the income of farmers by 2022 . Yet the peasants are not getting the minim um support price , which in practice became maximum selling price . Almost all the budgetary support to peasants has been withdrawn and they are left to the vagaries of weather unprotected . They landed in a debt trap and are committing suicides . This pathetic condition is due the implementation of anti-peasant policies by the successive governments . While making tall promises of turning agriculture into prosperous activity by ensuring world market prices to the agricultural prices , the government has been taking steps that that depress the prices . Take the case of edible oils .
India used to import edible oils less than 100,000 tonnes – less
18 than 5 per cent of domestic consumption during 1970s . These imports rose to 1.5 million tones in 1980 and further surged to 2 million tones in 1988 . The import bill of edible oils stood second to that of crude oil . The government implemented Technical Mission for Oilseeds to augment the domestic production , which involved support to oil seed cultivation , infusing processing technology and creating remunerative price to oil seeds with financial support at every stage . Imports are regulated through taxation and canalization . Within a short period of six years , the domestic production increased by 78 per cent from 11.3 million to 2 million tones and imports came down to 0.1 million in 1992-93 .
Then came neoliberal economic policies dictated by the imperialist monsters followed by the agreement of W orld Trade
Organisation . Duty rates on the import of palm oil were slashed from 65 per cent in 1994 to 25 per cent in 1997 and to 15 per cent in the next year . As cheap palm oil imports flooded , domestic production suffered and never recovered since then . The traditional oilseed cultivation plummeted , peasants faced heavy losses and hundreds of small scale oil extracting industries closed their shops .
India has now become the largest importer of edible oils in the world with annual imports exceeding 15 million tonnes valued at more the Rs . 650 billion . These imports consisted largely of palm oil , a perennial plantation crop . Palm oil plantations in Malaysia are owned US multinational like Bunge and India became captive market for them .
Palm oil was neither a part of Indian productioncontd . on page 19
Class Struggle