CPI strikes out at govt, economic policy at Durban meet

JAIPUR: The 17th conference of the World Federation of Trade Unions was held earlier this month in Durban, South Africa. Amarjeet Kaur, general secretary of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) represented India and delivered a speech representing the opinion of the Communist Party of India.
She explained that the current model of economic growth across the world was “producing common ruins such as hunger, poverty, environmental destruction and war that accentuate poverty, unemployment, under employment, loss of wages, wage cuts, denial of social security, pension etc, against the workers.” However, workers had begun to retaliate – but this movement of workers lacked political vision and remains scattered and sporadic, she said.
“Indian economy is in doldrums. Hunger and poverty is avowed, unemployment is acute, joblessness is increasing, informalisation of employment in the formal sector is the norm of the day. Agriculture in India that contributes a minor share to the GDP but constitutes a disproportionately larger share of employment is in the retreat. India’s manufacturing sector is dwindling. No employment generating policies are on the anvil.
India’s present growth is neither inclusive nor equitable. It is a jobless growth that sharpens the dichotomy of piling wealth on the one side and increasingly dismal penury on the other,” she said.
She came down heavily against privatization: “Privatization of government undertakings, companies, banks, insurance, institutions, assets etc, opening up the domestic market in the name of liberalization, handing over of national wealth like rivers, hillocks, forests etc to the MNCs, tax reliefs and other concessions to the corporate are carried out as policy prescriptions for more than two decades,” she said, reminding the international delegates that India is home to a third of the world’s poor.
“One third of the world’s malnourished children live in India. By 2020 India is set to become the youngest country in the world with 64% of its population in the working age group. Such demographic potential should offer an edge of economic growth over other economies. But the policies that India adopts are not only too far from reaping the demographic dividend but also threaten to create a wasteful human resource due to lack of quality education, lack of access to opportunities, inadequate health care etc,” she said.
She warned that institutions that offered a buffer to India during the economic crisis of 2008 are now in the process of being eroded: “Although the stock markets plunged as the FIIs in a panic reaction had withdrawn their funds, (India’s) well regulated banking sector, with a negligible exposure to toxic assets stood firm. But less than a decade since the crisis, the Indian government is out to destroy nationalized banking sector by subjecting it to privatization, open to FDI and bringing about the disastrous move of mergers,” she said, adding that five general strikes have been called in the recent past, with the latest held on September 2.
“180 million workers across the length and breadth of the country had struck work and displayed their ire against the policies of the government. India faces a grave threat in the authoritarian regime of the right wing BJP. Indian parliamentary democracy is being hollowed out rendering the people powerless in the process of policy making,” she said.
She also pointed to the need to strengthen trade unions: “The size of the global work force has doubled in the last two decades. But the size of the trade unions has not come even near to keeping pace with the requirements. This has resulted in the dwindling bargaining power of the trade unions globally. Trade unions should grow and expand to play and sustain the interventionist role in creation of international standards, to challenge the trade barriers, to demand uniformity of working conditions from the global MNCs and TNCs etc. These are the newer arenas for the class oriented trade union movements to dwell upon,” she said.
There were 112 speakers from 103 countries at the three-day conference. The World Federation of Trade Unions is a 71-year-old organization.