Have we seen what has happened at Kopili power project in Umrongso? A sudden bang and it was all gone. They are clearing project after project. The big dam is coming. This state government’s complicity in it is all well known. This government is doing everything against us and against our interests. The Green Tribunal is a shame! Are they green, white, saffron or black? They want to sell the NRL. They are not only selling our pride, they are also selling our assets. We are in a ruinous state. But, Assam is no exception.
What is happening in the country? Do we have anything to speak about the politicians- the ruling party politicians? Are there any politicians in the ruling party? Do the RSS, BJP believe in collective or are they all reduced to a single all powerful–god like omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient leader?
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It is so obvious that their supreme leader never uses first person plural. He always speaks in first person singular. So it is not only the question for us. It is also a question for the RSS and the BJP and their pride, if they have any pride left still. Or is it that their leader is bigger and taller than their organizations.
Now important, very important things affecting the life of our people are decided by the sweet will of a person ignoring the time honoured democratic and parliamentary procedures. It is a shame on us.
He would say-take out the old and ineffective laws and throw them to the dustbin and frame new laws. Immediately old laws would be thrown away and new sets of laws will be framed. Are laws made and unmade in this manner? Is our Prime Minister a magician that he can touch a thing and turn it to anything he wants?
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Now, he is in a selling spree of our public sector undertakings? The latest in the news is Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), Shipping Corporation of India, NEEPO and THDC. It took decades to build these organizations and now this government is handing them out to the private sectors.
When you hand them over to the private players, what happens to the assets and the employees of the organisation? They will grab the assets at throw away prices and also throw away a percentage of employees and lower the wages of the rest.
The salary difference in private sectors between the top person and bottom person is at times in hundreds and at times even in thousand. So what will happen to the purchasing power of the most of the employees who were working in these organisations?
Suddenly some of them will be reduced to a state of penury. There are glaring examples in Assam. We have seen what has happened to the employees of the paper mills in Assam. It is true that all these things have not happened in a day.
The earlier governments had also done such things. These are in a way fall out of the new liberal economic policy introduced by the Congress government in the early 90’s when Manmohan Singh was the finance minister in P V Narasimha Roo government.
That is the time when process of disinvestment started in India. Again in Vajpayee government, there was a disinvestment ministry headed by Arun Shourie. But what the earlier governments did was systematic disinvestment of sick and non-performing, not profit making units and industries.
When Manmohan Singh formed the first UPA government at the centre, he promised a reform with a human face. Now the human face is gone, but reform is there in all its force. Modi is pursuing it with gusto. One of the major characteristics of this reform is disinvestment. But it is not systematic disinvestment, it is strategic disinvestment.
So when you pursue a policy of strategic disinvestment the question of loss and profit doesn’t arise at all. The sheer objective of the disinvestment is selling the public sector undertakings.
The government is doing it because it has no money in its exchequer because the fear of deficit financing is looming large. Why it didn’t happen in the era of Manmohan Singh, but is happening now?
It is the result of wrong economic policies pursued by this government. Immediately after coming to power, Modi government took two disastrous economic policy decisions. One was the demonetization and the other was the GST. Not for nothing Manmohan Singh said that the demonetization was organized loot and legalized plunder.
Were there any economists worth their salt who supported the demonetization? None. None of them supported it. The RBI Governor, during whose tenure it was done, even he didn’t support it. Abhijit Banerjee, who won the economics Nobel this year found no meaning in it.
All its declared objectives measurably failed. But no repentance on the part of the Prime Minister and his blind supporters. Manmohan Singh was so prophetic in his growth predication after the demonetization that he proved 100% correct. As predicted by him the growth dipped from 7.9% to 5.7% in April-June quarter in 2017-18.
The demonetization was a heavy blow to our economy. After the demonetization, instead of initiating recovery measures, the Modi government came with another murderous attack on our economy in the form of the GST.
Do you remember the funfair organized by this government when they were passing the GST in the parliament in the midnight? They called it a second freedom movement. The rest is history!