Daily Times

Every new right-wing leader or party in these difficult times bases its campaign on the slogan of “change”. It is the left, the so-called Socialist and Communist parties, that were believed to be the precursors of change but have now stuck to the capitalist system, which is facing perhaps the most catastrophic crisis in its 300 year history. This has also been the case in the recent Indian elections, where the Communist and left-wing parties were harping upon the issues of secularism, constitutionalism and democracy, as they had abandoned even the pretence of revolutionary politics, programme and perspectives. Meanwhile, the wily Modi used extreme inequality, his poor origins and demagogic talk about development to improve the lot of the masses to win his pyrrhic victory. Despite this rhetoric of change, nothing has changed for the oppressed; about a billion must brace for even greater misery and deprivation to be wrought by this reactionary bigot and his pro-corporate backers.

There was much talk about the high growth rates in India in the past decade or more. Contrary to the claims of the bourgeois media, economic growth has not led to a general improvement in the lives of the Indian people. While a middle-class has grown up in this environment and the ruling class has been able to reap super-profits, for the vast majority this growth has been built on the back of even further exploitation. Between 2001 and 2010, the average growth rate was between eight to nine percent. In the same period, population below the poverty line rose from 771 million to 836 million people.

In fact, there is a vast gulf between the haves and have-nots. Alongside high-tech, advanced computing, nuclear and space programmes, and the most obscene wealth, there is biblical poverty. Official unemployment stands at 3.5 percent. However, this is a gross underestimation. In fact, there is no scientific, statistical data to support this figure. A more relevant figure, from the Indian International Labour Organisation (ILO), showed that of workers aged 15 to 59 only 21.2 percent had a regular salaried job in 2011 and 2012. With the economy slowing down, the situation today is even bleaker. The statistics speak for themselves: more than 70 percent of Indians are believed to live on less than Rs 20 ($ 0.35) a day, 36 percent of women and 34 percent of men are undernourished along with 48 percent of all children under the age of five, 80 percent of rural and 64 percent of urban households consume less that the caloric norm. This situation is only set to worsen as food inflation has persistently remained in double digits with consumer price inflation above nine percent per year.

The situation in education and healthcare is no better. A startling 29 percent of children drop out of school between class one and class five with 46 percent dropping out by class eight. Due to the unleashing of market forces in healthcare, today 80 percent of outpatient care and 60 percent of inpatient care is provided by profit-making companies charging extortionate prices to normal people for the most basic of care. It is estimated that due to high prices, 80 million workers are pushed below the poverty line every year due to the debt they accrue if they are unlucky enough to need treatment.

In the past 20 years or so, working conditions and wages have suffered dramatically as bosses went on the offensive. Under the pressure of globalised conditions, bosses began squeezing more and more surplus value from the workers, via a series of methods, in particular with the elimination of long-standing jobs where many gains of the past had improved the condition of workers, and their replacement with contract workers on much lower wages and longer hours. This can be seen in the fact that labour productivity between 1999 and 2007 went up by five percent and between 2008 and 2011 by a further 7.6 percent, whereas real wages went down by two percent in the overall period. This has resulted in a polarisation of wealth with profits shooting up.

Meanwhile, the prices of many basic goods have risen much faster than the official Consumer Price Index of nine percent. According to the Indian government’s labour bureau, if one takes the Consumer Price Index for 2001 as equal to 100, the average price of selected goods for industrial workers has risen rapidly. Goods like pulses, cooking oil, milk, etc, went up by anything between 50 percent and 150 percent. These are the conditions suffered by the vast majority of people in India and are the basis upon which India’s recent growth has been based. Through this extreme exploitation and mistreatment of the masses, cheap commodities can be produced, minerals can be mined and export to other countries can serve to enrich a tiny minority at the top.

Simply to keep up with the growing demand for work, one million jobs need to be created every month in order to satisfy the increasing population. However, the situation is not set to improve as the slowdown of the economy in general is also slowing down investment rates. All of these socio-economic conditions, with large layers of the masses subject to extreme conditions, will provide kindling for the blaze of the future Indian revolution, sparks of which we are already seeing today. The Indian proletariat has a long history of militant struggles and revolutionary movements against the rule of capital, as we saw during the revolutionary upheaval of 1946 triggered by the sailors’ revolt, and again in the 1970s.

The Modi regime is embarking on an onslaught against the working classes. They have announced the largest privatisation in the history of India, cuts in subsidies are in the pipeline and capital will get a free hand to increase its profits. Labour laws are on the anvil and the deprivation will exacerbate with price hikes and cuts in subsidies with these aggressive neo-economic policies. The only change the Hindu fundamentalist BJP can give the Indian working classes is for the worse. With the crisis of capitalism relentlessly falling into one slump after another, the only recipe for its continued existence is to mercilessly increase exploitation and grind down human labour to sustain the rates of profits of corporate vultures. The ruling class is deluded and believes we have reached the “end of class struggle”. Modi and his coterie are in for a shock. There will be a lightning backlash against this reactionary regime and its efforts to preserve decaying capitalism, with severe attacks against the oppressed masses. There is a seething mood of anger among the hundreds of millions of Indian workers. As is always the case, after a period of lull, the workers have begun to regain their confidence. The workers have begun to recover from the defeats of the past, as a young, new generation of workers, untainted by those defeats, are beginning to organise and are starting to fight back. Stormy events impend.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com