It is now one full year since Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister. The government continues to indulge in tall talks, but the rhetoric is sounding increasingly hollow. Modi and his men stand exposed on almost every promise they had made to the people.
This was supposed to be a year of respite from rising prices. When diesel and petrol prices dropped initially, though in much less proportion than the global decline in petro prices, BJP leaders went to town claiming it as a gift from the Modi government. Modi himself described it as a sign of good luck he is bringing for the people. But as Narendra Modi completes his first year in office, repeated hikes in diesel and petrol prices have again become the order of the day. Fares and freight rates have gone up; even platform tickets have not been spared, the rate has doubled from Rs 5 to Rs 10!
Agrarian distress is spreading like an epidemic. Farmers’ suicides are being reported from all corners of the country, not only from the old suicide belts of southern and western states, but increasingly now from states in northern and eastern zones, and even right in the middle of a rally near the Indian Parliament. Untimely rains have damaged crops heavily across the country and while farmers await compensation to cover their huge losses, central and state governments are only trying to outdo each other in making complacent claims.
Far from taking urgent measures to mitigate the acute agrarian distress, the Modi government has made it clear that it would like to use this crisis as an opportunity to push more and more farmers out of agriculture and grab their land for greedy corporate without even bothering to ask landowners for their consent. Despite countrywide uproar, the government has re-promulgated the notorious land-grab ordinance for a second time. Along with land and other natural resources, the government is also trying to lure corporate investors with the offer of cheap skilled labour.
The BJP may like us to believe that the ascent of Modi to the PM’s post has raised India’s international profile and his foreign trips symbolise India’s growing stature and role in international affairs, but in reality most of his foreign visits have been aimed at attracting foreign investment. In the process he is also trying to help his Indian corporate cohorts like Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani secure business contracts abroad. The controversial coal mining deal for Adani in Australia, backed by a proposed $1 bn loan from SBI, raised eyebrows in both India and Australia. It is another matter that the deal has run into trouble in the face of powerful protests in both countries,
Indeed, consent-free cheap land, and union-free rights-free cheap labour, are Modi’s biggest incentives to attract foreign investment. The so-called move to rationalise labour laws and abolish inspector raj, initiated by the Rajasthan government and now taken up with great gusto by the Union government itself, is a brazen attempt at further tilting India’s labour laws and factory and business rules in favour of big capital and against the working class. A similar move is on to legitimise child labour in so-called ‘family enterprises’, a euphemism for the supply chain of sweat shops for big companies. The cabinet has already approved an amendment to this effect in the existing child labour abolition act.
While the government has thus been busy unveiling and executing its economic vision of FDI-dependent corporate-driven restructuring of the Indian economy, the RSS and its affiliates have been systematically vitiating the atmosphere with their majoritarian agenda of communal nationalism and shrill opposition to the democratic aspirations and assertion of the people in every sphere. From the spoken and printed word to the visual and social media, hate speech has become the signature of the Sangh brigade. While the government occasionally tries to distance itself under public pressure, the practitioners of hate speech and other hate crimes carry on with impunity.
The only reassuring component of the new regime’s year one balance-sheet comes not from the government but from the people many of whom had voted emphatically a year ago to install the Modi Sarkar in office. The people are making it clear that they cannot be taken for granted. Farmers are up in arms against the anti-farmer land-grab ordinance and the all-pervasive corporate-friendly anti-farmer bias of the government. Workers have also expressed their readiness to resist the government’s anti-worker anti-people moves. After powerful strikes of coal miners, telecommunication and financial sector workers and employees, trade unions across the country have now come together to launch a concerted campaign for the basic rights and demands of Indian workers.
The growing disillusionment with the Modi government has also begun to make its presence felt in election results. After facing a resounding rebuff from the Delhi electorate in the Assembly elections, the BJP has also been snubbed in the West Bengal municipal elections. As the Modi government begins its second year, let us get ready for a more decisive and determined popular resistance.
