Open Forum
New Delhi, 31 August 2022
Pro-Rich Development
CHANGE OF STRATEGY
VITAL
By Dhurjati Mukherjee
Tall claims about India’s achievements and
future projections by leaders are oft heard, but sadly they fail to understand
or choose to ignore the grim reality. It is not known to many that the path of
development followed by successive governments has resulted in maximum numbers
of refugees, this being more from the wars India fought. This includes the
regular homelessness that takes place due to inundation and virtually no
rehabilitation taking place due to swindling of money by ‘corrupt’ political
leaders.
Recently, the Tamil Nadu government pointed
out something very revealing in a petition to the Supreme Court dealing with
freebies issue. Many economists and analysts have denounced the growing tendency
of state governments in the matter. It is unknown how concerned they actually are
about the economy and whether the benefits of development do reach all sections
of society.
The DMK, in its submission to the apex court,
revealed that the Modi government, in the first three years (2014-2017) had
written off Rs 72,000 crore loans of the Adani Group and in the last five years
(2017-2022), public sector banks have written off loans worth Rs 7.27 lakh
crore. It is not known why this did not attract the attention of the CAG and
those analysts who lecture about state finances. Does this not seem that the
government has unilaterally taken a pro-rich, pro-corporate stand?
Recent articles appearing in the media too have
not touched on loan waivers or various types of favours granted to corporates
over the years. One may mention here that land is being given at a very low
cost – perhaps around 20-25 percent of the market value – to corporates for
building hospitals and/or educational institutions where the upper and middle
income sections can afford to go.
The question arises why is such favour
granted to corporates with public money? But it is surprisingly evident
that it is a general norm for most economists to argue the need for curtailing
subsidies, citing examples in the West, which are developed economies and where
poverty and squalor is not so rampant in rural areas as in India.
Development as a way of life creates
non-citizens, who have no voice in the formulation and implementation of
policies. If development carries the banality of violence, sustainable
development is a more quixotic quest, more oxymoron rather than logical.
Sustainability tries to modify the brew just as human relations tried to
smoothen the arrogance of terrorism. Sustainable development attempts to modify
development without examining its logic or grammar. Social analysts believe
that development in the country today – or even earlier – has a corporate
hypocrisy or a UN model of aid and caring.
Delving deep into the problem, one may refer
here to the Oxfam report titled ‘India Supplement 2022 -- Inequality Kills’,that
revealed as many as 84 percent of households suffered a decline in their income
in a year, thereby indicating tremendous loss of life and livelihoods, the
number of Indian billionaires grew from 102 to 142. It also stated that
just one percent wealth tax on 98 richest billionaire families in India can finance
Ayushman Bharat, the national public health insurance fund of the government
for over seven years. It also pointed out that the collective wealth of India’s
100 richest people hit a record high of Rs 57.3 lakh crore (USD 775 billion) in
2021.
The report rightly suggested a one percent
surcharge on the richest 10 percent of the Indian population to fund inequality
combating measures such as higher investments in school education, universal
healthcare, and social security benefits like maternity leaves, paid leaves and
pension for all Indians. But the government is not interested in taxing the super-rich
but only concerned about the growing burden of subsidies that go the lower
echelons of society. They are joined by a section of economists, which is ignorant
of the social reality and always compare the nation with policies and
programmes adopted in the Western world.
Reserved quotas have, however, barely
scratched the problem. Since 1983, the government implemented a policy of
reserving 50 percent of jobs in the coveted civil service for socially
under-privileged castes, but by 2019 only four individuals from these
categories had made it to a list of 89 secretary-level positions. How many such
ingrained inequities can be remedied? In 2021 only 50.89 million individuals in
a population of 1.4 billion people filed income tax returns and only half that
number paid any worthwhile tax.
According to Prof Prabhat Patnaik, emeritus professor
of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University,the solution to gross inequity lies
in “taxing the rich and investing the proceeds for the neglected social sectors
-- it is a shame that large numbers of people continue to have no access to
health or education.” He pointed to how government policies have consistently
favoured the rich since the country embarked on economic liberalisation in the
early 1980s. Inheritance tax was abolished in 1985 and in 2017 the government
abolished wealth tax, allowing the concentration of wealth in rich families. In
September 2019, corporate tax was slashed from 35 percent to 26 percent.
The big question that arises is whether the
government is at all interested in taxing the rich? Or is it only concerned
with freebies and downsizing subsidies? Favours in different forms are being
extended to corporate groups. One may refer to a very recent S&P Global
Ratings report about Modi having favoured the Adani Group that said that
acquisitions through huge debts may have a negative effect on the Group. Thus,
while big corporations can easily get money from banks and financial
institutions, small traders and manufacturers have to struggle to get a loan of
say Rs 5 or Rs 10 lakh.
Development, therefore, is a discourse making
very little sense. The Indian state, powered by a right-wing autocratic style
of leadership, is well on its way to alienating the most underprivileged and
oppressed, including the economically weaker sections -- citizens in actual
need of ‘development’. Ironically, the present pattern of development seems to
have less and less space for its minorities, its ethno-religious and racial
‘others’ and its youth, which has taken to pelting stones and hurling slogans
instead of wielding books. Its attack on intellectual institutions and student
movements sounds like the dreaded death-knell of democracy in a nation that is
home to one-sixth of humanity.
Thus, there is a need for critically looking at
the grass-roots to understand the nature of crisis and accordingly plan India’s
strategy of development without being enamoured with Western styles as their
population density is much less while per capita incomes are much high.
Development of villages and making them productive centres of growth is what is
needed at this juncture -- not favouring the rich and giving concessions to
middle income sections.---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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