Exposure of the “human face” of capitalist reforms

Three and half years ago, the UPA government came to power with Left Support, declaring that it will carry on the economic reforms program of liberalization, privatisation and globalization, albeit with a “human face”.

The masses of workers and peasants and working people, who had come onto the streets against the anti worker, anti peasant policies pursued by the previous NDA government, were told –“there is no alternative to capitalist reforms. But our government will ensure that these reforms are carried out with a human face. We will ensure that livelihood of workers and peasants and working people are not hurt”. And allegedly to prove its sincerity, the UPA government promulgated the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) after weeks and months of debate, involving the government, the UPA-Left coordination, as well as various prominent activists in the movement of the people for their rights.

A lot of effort went into the framing of the NREGA. Using their wide experience of the working “or non working” of past social welfare schemes, the proponents of the NREGA argued for mechanisms to ensure that the scheme would work and the target – 100 days of employment as manual labour at the minimum wages for that area for one member of every rural family that demanded it – would be met. There was also a provision that state governments must pay unemployment allowance at the minimum wages in case the workers were denied work. Also, to ensure that the monies invested would produce socially useful objects, it was demanded that the gram sabhas have an important role in proposing the kind of projects that would be taken up.

While a whole set of activists, including many communist parties and groups, were set into motion to make the NREGA work, and to mobilize the rural poor to make their claims under the NREGA, the UPA government went about its real business – continuing with the economic reforms program of the previous government.

Capitalism has been allowed to flourish in town and country. All obstacles to the flourishing of capitalism are being systematically removed. The capitalist path of development is inexorably leading to concentration of wealth at one pole, and concentration of poverty at the other. It is leading to increasing all round unemployment, as vast masses of rural population are being subjugated to capitalist forces and are being ruined. The phenomenon of peasant suicides is too well known to bear repetition. The experience of the peasantry as well as statistics of costs and prices realised by the peasantry show that given the present economic and political system, agriculture is not a tenable livelihood for most peasants.

Meanwhile, the UPA government has gone ahead with passing laws that enable the state to forcibly acquire the lands of hard-working peasants and hand it over to the Indian and foreign capitalists in the name of developing Special Economic Zones. Lakhs of farmers, and also lakhs of agricultural workers, as well as many others whose livelihood is linked with that of the farmers, are losing their livelihood as a result. All over India, fierce struggles are raging between the working class and peasantry on one hand, and the big bourgeoisie and the state on the other, over the Special Economic Zones.

A system that is based on the exploitation and plunder of labour and resources of people, a system that mercilessly deprives people of their livelihood for the sake of maximum profits, is certainly not interested in the well-being of the rural poor. There must be no illusion as to why the government, the UPA government to be precise, promulgated NREGA, and in whose interests this was carried out.

NREGA was promulgated to mask the vicious attacks that were and are being launched against workers and peasants and working people all over the country. It was launched to create an illusion that workers could get some benefits under the capitalist system and they need not fight it. It was launched to divide the rural poor and the broad masses of peasantry, and to divide the opposition to the bourgeoisie and to the capitalist reforms.

Three and half years ago, the CGPI called upon communist parties, trade unions, peasants organisations, and all forces which were fighting for rights of people not to have illusions in UPA governments program of “reforms with a human face”. Rather, the communists and fighting forces must unfurl the banner of rights of the people, and fight to build a new society where these rights are guaranteed. In this period, we have had the spectacle of various communist parties justifying the UPA government’s anti worker and anti peasant program by pointing to precisely such programs as NREGA as evidence of the “human face” of this government. This has been nothing but treachery as far as workers and peasants are concerned.

It is in this context that we need to understand the report submitted by the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to the Union Ministry of Rural Development, on the working of the first phase of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), in December 2007. The report which revealed grave shortcomings in the working of the Act, has led to expected debate between proponents and opponents of the Act. (A brief summary of the findings are on page 6 in this issue).

Hundred days of employment at the minimum wages level applicable for the district hardly provides succour to the poor. The CAG survey shows that even this is a distant dream for the vast majority of rural poor.

The CAG Report points out that a little over 3% of the registered households received the 100 days employment in the gram panchayats surveyed. Its report reveals the utter lack of interest of the administrative apparatus of the state at all levels in ensuring the implementation of the act. This indifference is revealed in state governments not even bothering to appoint or designate the necessary officials for monitoring the implementation of the act, at the state level, at the block level, and at the gram panchayat level. It is revealed in the lack of participation of the gram panchayats and the gram sabhas in the decision making.

There are no clear records of who was employed for how many days, nor of how much wages the person received and what work did he or she do. Workers who did not get 100 days work did not get the unemployment insurance the act guaranteed.

The CAG report clearly points out that the majority of the gram sabhas did not meet even once in the year, indicating the complete marginalisation of the people in decision making. The works that are being carried out are not works that the rural people have put forth as emerging from their needs.

Thus the CAG report merely confirms what has been said earlier, that the NREGA was promulgated with the specific intent of fostering the illusion that the UPA government was committed to providing livelihood and relief to the rural poor, even as it was going ahead with the economic program of capitalist reforms. It was a definite policy statement of the UPA government, for which it mobilized the support of various communists, intellectuals and rights’ activists, which helped the bourgeoisie to temporarily lend some credibility and legitimacy to the capitalist reforms program.

India’s peasantry and rural poor are at this time facing massive attacks on their livelihood, both as a consequence of the capitalist system and the policies being pursued by the UPA government. The road for the emancipation of the peasantry and the rural poor lies in joining hand with the working class and fighting for the overthrow of the capitalist system together with all its attendant evils. When workers and peasants have political power in their hands, and build a new economic and political system directed towards ensuring the well-being of the toiling masses, only then will productive employment and security of livelihood for every member of society become a reality.