Irfan Engineer
Prime Minister Narendra Modi often tells his audience that he is working for the development of 1.25 billion Indians. The sub-text is that he would work for development of all Indian regardless of their religion, caste, ethnicity, and regardless of their accident of birth and their cultural heritage. The idea is noble and needs to be fully supported.
However, if we apply a bit of our mind to the contention, two questions would come to mind – 1) Are the resources for development unlimited for the desired development of all 1.25 billion Indians? Given the extremely limited resources, irrespective of the appealing slogans, there cannot be development that is going to benefit all. There would be contested claims on development. Those who are more organized and rich in resources to lobby with the state machinery and have easy access to bureaucracy would exclude those who can’t make their voice heard. To expect the government to be blind and neutral to interest groups, communities, castes, gender, cultural factors and to rise above their own prejudices is contrary to lived human experience. Slogan of benefits of development for all is either noble declaration of intents at best and often to fool the gullible.
2) Are we doing justice when we talk of development of all 1.25 billion Indians, given the levels of inequalities? While increasing number of Indians are joining the club of richest 100 in the world and even richest 50, the number of Indians surviving on income of less than Rs. 20/- a day is staggering 836 million! 200 million Indians sleep hungry every night! 212 million Indians are undernourished and 7000 Indians die of hunger every year, and if we add hunger related diseases to the cause of death, there are 10 million deaths every year!
Increasing number of Indians joining the richest 50 and 100 in the world makes some Indians, particularly the urban middle class, proud. They have ostrich like approach towards increasing inequalities and India being almost at the bottom of all human development indices which include illiteracy, lack of access to health facilities, infant mortality rate, etc. They wished nobody talked about the issues that could trouble their conscience. When Prime Minister Modi talks of development of all 1.25 billion Indians, he is technically talking of development of the poor also. But, given that the resources are limited, the moot questions are, what is the strategy for development of all Indians? And, what are the priorities of the Government? Where is the tax payers money going to be utilized?
One strategy could be to build infrastructure and create assets in the backward regions through the labour of the people of the region ensuring inclusion of all castes, gender and communities – both as beneficiaries of the development and inclusion in contribution of their labour. Infrastructure like irrigation facilities in the hands of the village communities, roads, electricity, health centres, educational institutions, toilets, easy access to markets, common spaces for community gathering etc. That would create opportunities for those who need them most, put income in the hands of hungry and malnourished. Income in their pockets would create demand for industrial goods and the industrialists would be indirect beneficiaries. When Prime Minister Modi talks of development of all, this is obviously not the strategy he has in his mind.
The second strategy could be to spend tax payers money and common resources of the country (including environment, land, water, forests and other natural resources) to create huge assets and public spectacles, from which only a countable few benefit. The proponents of this strategy tell us that poor – labourers, farmers, artisans and small entrepreneurs – will fritter away opportunities and would not lead to faster growth as, say, those having access to huge capital and finance would. Faster growth would create job opportunities and indirectly benefit the poor. The foreign investors do sense the opportunities to make huge profits but they do so by spending as little on labour as possible and by appropriating common resources of the country like land, labour, spectrum and natural resources. In order to maximize profits, spending on labour has to be minimized. That is achieved by automizing technologies that greatly reduces need of human resources. This growth is therefore also called as jobless growth. The second strategy to reduce spending on labour is to keep wages as low as possible, in fact reducing the labour to slave labour. Workers can organize themselves and act concertedly to protect and further their interests and demand their just share for their contribution to the surplus being created in the economy. Labour laws in a democracy should protect and facilitate the workers to organize themselves and enter into collective bargaining for their share in the surplus they are helping create.
The state in the second strategy for ‘development’ makes available land, natural resources at cheapest possible cost to the controllers of huge capital and invests tax payers money in creating few islands of ‘world class’ infrastructure for the entrepreneurs controlling capital, e.g. ports, roads, flyovers, rail links, energy supply etc. The state facilitates coercive land acquisition from the poor without letting them get organized and bargain collectively the price or even to hold on to their asset as of right. The poor are told to buy their needs like fertilizers, pesticides, food grains, from the market and subsidy is bad for the economy but when it comes to selling their assets, the investors are not told to buy from the market. The second strategy therefore benefits those who have access to huge financial capital as the state works for them by allowing them to exploit land and natural resources of the country on the one hand and help keep the wages low by reforming labour laws to make it more difficult for the trade unions to organize the workers. The poor lose their asset to the industries at less than market price on one hand and fewer jobs created with slave labour wages. Hence, increasing inequalities in the country. Prime Minister Modi is offering precisely that to the international capital in his foreign tours under the slogan “make in India”. And this is being called working for the development of all 1.25 billion Indians.
.......CONTD
