1957 മെയ് 7 ഗവർണ്ണറുടെ നയപ്രഖ്യാപനത്തിനുള്ള നന്ദിപ്രമേയ ചർച്ചക്കുള്ള മറുപടി പ്രസംഗം. ഇ.എംഎസ്

"പിന്നെ പ്രധാനമായി ഉന്നയിച്ച ഒരു വാദം ഈ ഗവണ്മെന്റ് ഏകാധിപത്യത്തിന്റെ പ്രവണത കാണിക്കുന്നുവെന്നാണ്. അതിനുദാഹരണമായി പറയുന്നത് കമ്മ്യൂണിസ്റ്റ് പാർട്ടി നേതാക്കന്മാർ കമ്മ്യൂണിസ്റ്റ് പാർട്ടിയുടെ ഗവണ്മെന്റ് നടപ്പിൽ വരുത്തേണ്ട പരിപാടികളെക്കുറിച്ഛ് അഭിപ്രായം പറയുന്നുവെന്നാണ്. ഇത് ഏകാധിപത്യത്തിന്റെ പ്രവണതയായി ഞാൻ അംഗീകരിക്കുന്നില്ല. ജനാധിപത്യപരമായി ഭരണമുള്ള ഏതൊരു രാജ്യത്തും ഭരണം നടത്തുന്ന പാർട്ടികളിലെ നേതാക്കന്മാർ ഇങ്ങിനെ അഭിപ്രായം പുറപ്പെടുവിക്കും.

അജയഘോഷിന്റെയും, എ.കെ.ഗോപാലന്റെയും പ്രസംഗങ്ങൾ പോളിസിയെ സംബന്ധിച്ചാണ്. അത് ദൈനംദിന ഭരണകാര്യങ്ങളിലുള്ള ഒരു ഇടപെടലല്ല. പോളിസി സംബന്ധിച്ച് ജനാധിപത്യം നടക്കുന്ന ഏതു രാജ്യത്തും പാർട്ടി നേതാക്കന്മാർ പ്രസ്താവനകൾ പുറപ്പെടുവിക്കാറുണ്ട്. അതിൽ കൂടുതൽ എന്റെ പാർട്ടിയുടെ നേതാക്കൾ ചെയ്യുന്നില്ല. രണ്ടാമതായി ദൈനംദിന ഭരണത്തിൽ ഇടപെടുന്നു എന്നുള്ള കാര്യത്തെപ്പറ്റിയാണ്. എനിക്കു പറയാനുള്ളത് കമ്മ്യൂണിസ്റ്റ് പാർട്ടിയുടെ ഒരൊറ്റ ഘടകവും അതിലിടപെടുന്നില്ല. ആര് ഇടപെട്ടാലും മന്ത്രിമാർ അത് സ്വീകരിക്കാൻ പോകുന്നുമില്ല. കേരളത്തിൽ പൊതു തെരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പ് നടന്നശേഷം കൂടിയ പോളിറ്റ്ബ്യൂറോ ആദ്യമായി ഒരു തീരുമാനം എടുത്തു. അത് അജയ്ഘോഷ് തന്നെ പറഞ്ഞിട്ടുണ്ട്. എന്നാൽ ഒരു കാര്യം ഉണ്ട്. കമ്മ്യൂണിസ്റ്റ് പാർട്ടിയിലെ മന്ത്രിമാർ പാർട്ടിക്ക് അതീതരാണെന്ന് പാർട്ടിയും , പാർട്ടി സർക്കാരിന് അതീതമാണെന്നുള്ള നില പാർട്ടിയും എടുക്കയില്ല. മന്ത്രിസഭ രൂപീകരിച്ചതോടു കൂടി മന്ത്രിമാർ പാർട്ടി അച്ചടക്കത്തിന് അതീതരരാണെന്നുള്ള ഒരു നിലപാട് ഇല്ല. അത് മറ്റ് പാർട്ടികൾ എടുക്കുന്നുണ്ടോ എന്നുള്ളതിലേക്ക് ഞാൻ കടക്കുന്നില്ല. അത് ഇവിടെ പ്രസക്തമല്ല. എന്നാൽ ഒരു കാര്യം എനിക്ക് ഉറപ്പു പറയാൻ കഴിയും. കമ്മ്യൂണിസ്റ്റ് പാർട്ടിയിലെ ഓരോ മെമ്പറും അയാൾ മന്ത്രിസഭയിലായാലും കൊള്ളാം,  നിയമസഭയിലായാലും കൊള്ളാം പുറത്തായാലും കൊള്ളാം പാർട്ടി അച്ചടക്കത്തിന് വിധേയനാണ്. പക്ഷെ പാർട്ടി മന്ത്രിസഭയുടെ കാര്യത്തിലായാലും കൊള്ളാം, നിയമസഭയുടെ കാര്യത്തിലായാലും കൊള്ളാം ദൈനംദിനകാര്യങ്ങളിൽ കൈകടത്തുകയില്ല."

U.P. law a ploy to pit Dalits and Muslims against each other’

Omar Rashid LUCKNOW

The Uttar Pradesh government’s ordinance against unlawful conversions is a ploy to pit Dalits and Muslims against each other and it would create fear among the communities, Dalit rights activists in the State said on Wednesday.

S.R. Darapuri, retired IPS officer and a Dalit rights activist, said the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020 was indirectly targeted at Muslims, Dalits and Christians.

While noting that conversion of Dalits to Christianity and Islam was not as common as before, he said the ordinance was meant to deter them from converting to the Buddhist faith.

Buddhist conversion

“They are killing many birds with one stone... Dalits will face the biggest hitch. The biggest adverse impact will be on the Buddhist conversion of Dalits,” said Mr. Darapuri.

Udit Raj, former MP and Congress spokesperson, who has conducted mass conversions in the past, said the ordinance was a ploy to pit Dalits against Muslims.

Ram Kripal Pasi, national general secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Pasi Samaj outfit, said the ordinance was a strategy of the BJP-RSS to “keep Dalits under the Hindu fold”.

Jobs, exports and the trade pacts link. India needs to shed its exaggerated fears of trade agreements to create new jobs — the country’s biggest challenge

India’s economy contracted by 23.9% in the first quarter of 2020-21. According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Indian economy will further contract by 10% in the July-September quarter. This is technically defined as a recession by economists. India is in an economic recession for the first time in its independent history.

‘India is in a recession’ means very little to the average Indian. The headline numbers too matter little to most people. The average Indian ‘feels’ the economic despair when her older child has lost his job or when her younger one cannot find a job despite her impressive educational qualifications. She ‘sees’ the pall of gloom when many workshops in her town are closed or when trucks remain idle or when trains do not run or when restaurants do not have customers.

Jobs are the first casualty

Thousands of people lost their jobs due to the slowing economy in 2018-19 and 2019-20. Unemployment had reached a 45-year high. Then, in March 2020, COVID-19 struck India and a total national lockdown was announced. By one estimate, more than 2 crore people lost their jobs during the lockdown. They included all kinds of jobs — regular salaried, non-contractual, casual, daily wage, and self-employment. When jobs were lost, incomes were lost too. Millions of people found that they did not have a roof over their heads or money to feed their families.

In any country, the ultimate economic test is, are there sufficient jobs, incomes and livelihoods for all in the workforce? The single biggest challenge confronting India today is jobs. When people are poor, hungry and desperate, any job will be a blessing. The job that requires hard, manual work and pays the lowest daily wage is the work provided under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme. During the seven-month lockdown period, there were 11 crore people who asked for work under MGNREGA. That is 20 times more than the total number of persons employed by all the companies listed on the stock exchange. The only meaningful conversation about the economy that we ought to have is how to recover the jobs that were lost and create new well-paying jobs.

Let us suppose that the government makes available ₹10 lakh as a loan to four companies for capital investment. The first company, a steel manufacturing company, will create one new job with this amount. The second, an automobile manufacturer, will create three new jobs. The third, a producer of leather goods, will create 70 new jobs. And the fourth, an apparel and garment maker, will create 240 new jobs including 80 for women (Economic Survey 2016-17).

Where the jobs are

Large numbers of good quality jobs can be created only in sectors that are labour intensive, and where India has a comparative advantage, such as apparel, leather goods, value-added agriculture and so on. These job-creating sectors depend not only on the domestic market but, significantly, on export markets. More than one-half of the leather goods and one-third of the apparel produced in India are exported to other countries. India, therefore, needs to find more export markets, nurture them, and sustain them amid intense global competition. Merchandise exports also create supporting jobs in warehousing, transport, stevedoring, container stations, shipping, ship chandling, ports and export financing. It is therefore very important to encourage and incentivise exports to be able to create many new jobs in the country.

A recent research study by Arvind Subramanian and Prof. Shoumitro Chatterjee shows how exports were the most significant factor that drove the Indian economy in the ‘boom years’ of 2003-2012 (https://bit.ly/39fRNCX). Contrary to popular perception, Subramanian and Chatterjee have shown that during the period since 1995, India did exceptionally well not only in exports of services such as information technology but also in the exports of manufactured goods and other merchandise. India was the third fastest growing exporter of manufactured goods in this period with 12% annual growth, after Vietnam and China. There is irrefutable evidence that India’s new trade policy, unveiled first in 1991-92, and taken forward by every subsequent government until 2014, has paid rich economic dividends in generating jobs, incomes and consumption.

Exports and agreements

Unfortunately, despite the “Make in India” hype, export volumes have languished in the last six years. Merchandise goods exports were $314 billion in 2013-14 and remained stagnant for the next five years touching $313 billion in 2018-19. The reason for this (other than the disruption of export supply chains due to demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax) is the complete reversal in the direction of India’s foreign trade policy with higher tariffs, non-tariff barriers, quantitative limits, the return of licensing, border country restrictions and the appreciating value of the rupee.

For nearly two decades, the countries of the world invested in a rule-based trading order. The age of trade agreements — both bilateral and multilateral — was born. There were more winners than losers because of trade agreements. Some historic trade agreements were the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR). Half-hearted and hesitant agreements like the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) failed. Whether we like it or not, the harsh truth is that exports are linked to trade agreements. The member-countries of a trade agreement promote trade among themselves with easy rules but restrict trade with non-members with hard rules. Many countries rushed to conclude bilateral agreements (free trade agreements or FTA) because they realised the benefits to members. Non-members suffered.

Break down the wall

It is true that FTA provisions were also misused by some countries to question the foreign investment policies and tax policies of other countries, usually recipients of foreign direct investment (FDI) like India. Purely trade and commercial disputes were dragged to international arbitral tribunals on the pretext of violating FTA provisions. India decided to keep FTAs in abeyance until we could agree with our partner countries, on a model FTA that built in safeguards against abuse. Unfortunately, under the current government, that has turned into an anti-FTA policy and has further metamorphosed into an anti-free trade policy. To put it bluntly, we are just a few steps away from full protectionism that kept India a closed and struggling economy for three decades.

Decades ago, Manmohan Singh, in his doctoral thesis at Oxford University, pleaded for India to shed its export pessimism. Today, we need to shed exaggerated fears of trade agreements. India cannot ‘protect’ its domestic industry with high trade barriers while aspiring for bilateral trade treaties to promote exports. This ‘have the cake and eat it too’ approach is naive and detrimental. Most manufacturing today has a long supply chain that cuts across many countries. To be able to export goods, India must import raw materials or equipment or technology from other countries in the supply chain. Hence, we must re-learn to engage with other countries and negotiate favourable trade agreements through the bilateral and multilateral routes. Otherwise, countries bound by trade agreements among themselves will shut the doors on India’s exports. Besides, it is common sense that no country will allow import of Indian goods and services unless that country is able to export its goods and services to India on reasonable and fair terms. The art of survival in a fiercely competitive world is engagement and negotiation.

India’s economy is in a shambles. Exports are one of the main engines to revive economic growth and create many new jobs. Subramanian and Chatterjee estimate that India has the immediate opportunity to export goods worth $60 billion in labour intensive sectors which can then create lakhs of new jobs. To revive exports, India needs greater and frictionless access to global markets. Protectionism and autarky will take us back several decades. Wisdom lies in learning from the past, being smart and resilient in the present and securing our prosperity in the future.

P. Chidambaram is a former Finance Minister of India and a current Member of Parliament. Praveen Chakravarty is a political economist and a senior office bearer of the Indian National Congress

https://epaper.thehindu.com/Home/MShareArticle?OrgId=GFM80IKB8.1&imageview=0

Refining trade union strategies to strike a chord. With labour law reforms set to change industrial relations, trade union responses must include social dialogue too

Ten central trade unions (CTUs) have called for a nation-wide strike on November 26, 2020 to condemn what they consider to be the anti-people, and anti-labour economic policies of the government. This follows strikes in the coal and defence sectors protesting privatisation and the corporatisation policies of the government. It is essential to understand as to why the central trade unions have decided to go on strike today.

Codes and flaws

With the introduction of economic reforms concretely since 1991, employers and the global financial institutions have been lobbying for labour market and structural reforms. The reform processes gained momentum since 2015 and the National Democratic Alliance government has enacted four Labour Codes in the last two years. The details of the labour law reforms have been described and critically analysed in the columns of this daily. The Codes are based on the fundamental unproven premise that labour laws and inspection system are obstacles in attracting investment, and, hence the government must promote a cheaper and flexible labour market.

The Codes do extend some labour rights such as universal minimum wage, statutory recognition of trade unions, formalisation of employment contracts, and social security to gig and platform economy workers. However, they also afford substantial flexibility to the employers in terms of easy hire and fire, freedom to hire contract labour and unregulated fixed-term-employment, etc. The Codes have also considerably redefined the concept and practice of labour inspection system by diluting it. The Codes and state retrenchment in the industrial sector and fiscal conservatism — especially in the context of higher levels of unemployment — along with stubborn inflation have created tremendous insecurity among workers. Migrant and informal workers underwent woeful experiences during the COVID-19 period, and trade unions as well as commentators perceive that the state has not provided adequate relief to workers.

Crisis and reforms

The central government and several State governments had chosen the COVID-19 crisis-ridden period as an “opportune time” to enact labour law reforms having far-reaching adverse consequences for labour rights and structural reforms. It is galling to note that the COVID-19 period has witnessed perhaps a maximum amount of legal and extra-legal measures issued by the state.

In such a context, trade unions have six options to confront or soften these measures — viz. social dialogue, political lobbying, political confrontation through Opposition parties, legal action by approaching the judiciary, seek the International Labour Organization’s intervention, and direct industrial action.

The central government, as per trade unions, did not conduct an effective and sustaining social dialogue, though it held a few symbolic parleys with them. At the State level, social dialogue institutions are largely absent or weak. The last Indian Labour Conference, a tripartite social dialogue body, was held in 2015 (https://bit.ly/39f01eT). The government has dismissed social dialogue as being ineffectual and even frustrating.

The Central trade unions, including the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated trade union, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, have made numerous representations to the government on their demands and suggestions not only relating to labour market reforms but also on tackling of COVID-19 crises. Who else is better suited to advise the government than the workers’ organisations on these issues? Trade unions contend that many of their suggestions have not been incorporated in the Codes and the COVID-19 relief measures.

The whole political exercise of the passage of the Farm Bills and the three Labour Codes during the COVID-19 period smacks of “un-democracy” as Parliament did not witness “healthy discussions”. The boycott by the Opposition parties ended up serving the cause of reforms, and they wittingly or otherwise became partners in the reform exercises. At any rate, the Opposition parties are waging their own battles of their relevance and incurably divided and pathetically irrelevant as a significant political force.

Seeking assistance

The judiciary seems to be the only source of hope in these times of “institutional corrosion”, aided and abetted by right-wing politics. Though the Supreme Court of India did not respond quickly to provide relief to migrant workers, it has struck down the Gujarat government’s amendment of the Factories Act. Unions must shed their judicio-phobia and approach it provided they have strong legal grounds to challenge reforms introduced by Central or State governments.

Trade unions, out of their patriotic mindset, do not use extensively the complaints mechanism created by the International Labour Organization for fear of washing dirty linen in the global spaces; but they did seek ILO intervention recently. But the ILO’s intervention in May 2020 only provided a temporary respite to trade unions as the government did what it has been doing.

So, trade unions are left with the only option — of demonstrative “industrial action” followed by sustained protest actions. It is in this context, that the central trade unions (except the BMS and its allies) have these demands (https://bit.ly/3pYZq6Q): direct cash transfer of ₹7,500 per month for all non-income tax-paying families; 10 kg free ration per person per month to all the needy; expansion of MGNREGA to provide 200 days of work in a year in rural areas at enhanced wages; extension of employment guarantee to urban areas; withdrawal of all anti-farmer laws and anti-worker labour codes; a halt to privatisation; protection of government employment; restoration of old pension schemes, etc.

The demands reflect disappointment and even hurt and anger experienced by the working class not only during the time of COVID-19 but also for events of the last three decades.

The Codes are set to rule the industrial relations system for long unless the government changes. This strike, as an individual event alone, is a signal to the larger society of the concerns of workers. Hence, it is legitimate but such action alone will not change the Codes. Trade unions must explore other avenues such as seeking the ILO’s intervention, judicial action and social dialogue. There is no alternative to social dialogue in a pluralistic democracy which all the parties in the industrial relations system must make effective use of and make suitable amendments to the Codes to aid both ease of doing business and promote labour rights. This strike is a reminder of this potential, positive reconstruction of laws.

K.R. Shyam Sundar is Professor, HRM Area, XLRI, Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur