‘Government is on a lie campaign’

Do you share the government’s perception that the economy is on a high growth path?

The claim of 8.2 per cent GDP growth is suspect. Such a growth is not reflected anywhere. Incomes and earnings of people are consistently going down in relative terms. There is also a claim that inflation has softened. But if you pick up daily essential retail items, you will see that inflation has nowhere softened but is surging. Fuel prices have added to this.

On the other hand, the entire state machinery is working in imaginative ways to suppress the earnings of workers. First by denying minimum wages and non-enforcement of statutory minimum wages, and second by encouraging violations of labour laws by the government in the name of ease of doing business. Agricultural workers do not even get 25 days of work in a year. They come to the cities and add to the unemployed armies in the urban centres, pushing down the wage rate.

There is absolutely no reflection of the alleged growth in the economy on the actual producers of economic growth. The government of the day is on a lie campaign, a misinformation campaign on various aspects of its initiatives. The government is arguing that India has been successful in raising people above the poverty line and that only 28 per cent of people are below the poverty line. How is this possible? During the last four years, economic inequalities have grown so fast that in 2014, it was one per cent of people cornering 48 per cent of the national wealth; in 2016, that became 53 per cent [of the national wealth], and at the end of 2017 it is 78 per cent.

The balance of payments position is getting more and more aggravated. This is putting pressure on the value of the rupee. The government should contain imports. When Trump is advocating protectionism, why cannot Narendra Modi put a stop to non-essential imports?

The government has, from time to time, projected that the private sector needs to come in and take the economy forward.

Private investments are not picking up at all despite concessions being given. The economy has been kept afloat by the public sector in this country. But government policies are crippling the public sector in a phased manner by routing their investible surplus by compelling them to buy back and offloading their shares in the market. Disinvestment does not allow public sector companies to have disposable funds with them. But the government is compelling these companies to buy their own shares from the government. The resource surplus produced by these companies internally through productive operations is taken away by the government.

All available information suggests that the economy took a hit after demonetisation, but the government does not think so.

The government will churn out figures through statistical manipulation. They have stopped the quarterly employment surveys, but whatever we have doesn’t show a positive generation of employment. Employment is only generated in the statements of Arun Jaitley and Narendra Modi. Team Lease, which is not a Left-led organisation, has claimed that 2.5 million jobs have been lost just by demonetisation.

There is a claim that GST will result in more tax compliance and thereby increase revenues for the Central and State governments.

The post-GST burden of indirect taxation has been much higher than in the pre-GST phase. But the worst impact has been the loss of autonomy by State governments. A particular State, like a Left Front State, would rather tax luxury items, the benefit of which would go to schemes for the poor. Now it cannot do that. Then, why should GST on medicines be so high? Our unions are demanding that there should be zero taxation on essential medicines.

In the productive segment, the scope of profit is getting limited owing to the overall recession. So the idea is to give a free hand to a handful of corporates to loot. The PM Rozgar Protsahan Yojana envisages that the government will pay from the exchequer the employers’ contribution of the PF for three years for new employment generated; in 2016-17, the Labour Ministry said there were 21 lakh beneficiaries. I asked the Minister in the Standing Committee whether 21 lakh jobs had been created.

The PM Fasal Bima Yojana, or crop insurance scheme, is financed from the state exchequer, while private insurance companies are getting subsidised. Nearly Rs.21,000 crore worth of premium was earned through this and only Rs.4,000 crore of claims were settled. The health insurance scheme is similarly financed out of the government exchequer. If this is going to be on the Fasal Bima pattern, it will be a disaster.