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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Hard Times by Ashok Mitra

Hard Times by Ashok Mitra

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published Published on Jan 1, 2010   modified Modified on Jan 1, 2010

Food prices have shot up by more than 20 per cent in the course of the past 12 months. A vast proportion of the nation is being battered by the price rise — the fixed income group, the working classes, landless peasantry and small farmers who have to buy at least a part of the grains they consume from the market. There is, however, no upheaval among the suffering people. One or two casual comments in the media, one or two protest rallies by this or that party in the Opposition, that is about all. The authorities are not bothered; they make the usual noises about how no effort is being spared to rein in the inflation and how an improvement in the situation could be expected soon. As for concrete measures to discipline prices, nothing much is on the agenda. There is no proposal to ban speculation in foodgrains futures. Nor is it proposed to roll back the easy money policy. The Reserve Bank of India drops a few hints now and then to indicate reservations with regard to a continuing regime of low interest rates. On such issues, though, the crucial decisions have long been transferred from the country’s central bank to the ministry of finance. That is to say, politicians have the final say in the matter. Ruling politicians are not extra enthusiastic to put a leash on easy credit, for class interests are involved. Those who borrow from the banks either to play the speculative game or to hoard grains are friends whom it will not be proper to inconvenience. The usual subterfuges are therefore taken recourse to. The Centre blames the state governments for not being vigilant enough against the hoarders. The states — at least some states — complain of the Centre’s indifference towards the public distribution system. New Delhi, with its ample reserves of foreign exchange, promises greater import of the commodities currently in short supply. Commission agents love the official announcement: if there are greater imports can lush commissions on their account be far behind?

About everybody is aware of the ground reality. Economic liberalization has reached its climacteric. It disapproves of government interference with the market forces. It also does not favour public investments, such as in agricultural infrastructure, which could have boosted farm output. Besides, State trading, neo-colonial policy states, is sin; public distribution of essential goods must not expand. Thank goodness, no major elections are in the offing. So why not allow the near and dear one make a few bits of extra money?

The picture would have been far different had the millions belonging to the working and middle classes refused to accept the situation with such demure resignation. In a functioning democracy, in case citizenry adversely affected by any official decision or non-decision are alert and united, they can most of the time force the authorities to listen to them. The collective strength of the trade union movement and an aroused middle class are not easy to defy. It used to be so over here too. Only, a little more than a couple of decades ago, the Ahilya Rangnekars and the Minal Gores could persuade angry housewives to come out in the streets with their broomsticks and bread rollers and command the government, till then apparently unconcerned about spiralling prices, into instant action. Their fury had taught the authorities the due lesson.

Economic liberalization has changed that landscape beyond recognition. It has gifted the country’s rulers with the boon of gorgeous increases in gross domestic product that can be flaunted before the world. What is much more significant, it has almost dissolved the alliance between the trade union movement and the once combatant middle class. Employment in the organized private sector has gone down since the onslaught of neo-liberal policies; in the public sector, it has at most remained stable. Registrations in the employment exchanges throughout the country have risen sharply. Instead of causing acute social tension, these developments have instead fractured the middle class. Nine-tenths of this class have not gained from the GDP increase spree. Only those belonging to the top decile, those engaged with software operations, entertainments and other services, besides automobiles and a handful of similar consumer durable industries, have reaped the benefits. To scan the monthly budget these days of this section of the comfortably-placed urban middle class is a liberal education. Expenditure of this class on food items as a proportion of their total spending has declined over the past decades. True, its members have not all turned into billionaires, but they are doing exceedingly well and have quickly learnt to enjoy the luxurious things in life, for which they have money to spare. They have money to spare for the share market too. High levels of food prices do not much concern them; their outlay on food does not take up more than five — at most ten — per cent of their monthly consumer expenditure.

Much of the bigger contingent of the middle class, of course, continues to be hard hit by the phenomenon of runaway food prices. The members of this group should have been angry beyond endurance. They cannot afford to be, for there have been other developments. Liberalization has resulted in the induction of labour-saving equipment across the board. Lay-offs and discharges are the order of the day. Not much of a protest is to be heard though. The threat of introduction of labour-displacing equipment has been enough to put trade union movement on its back foot. In former times, a coalition would overnight get formed between sympathetic sections of the middle class and the militant trade unions in the event of a lay-off taking place in some industry or other. They would collect the crowds, clog the streets and immobilize civic functioning until the authorities responded positively. They would do the same whenever prices rose abnormally. Economic liberalization has rendered defunct coalitions of that nature. Nobody writes to Marquez’s colonel any more; here in India nobody responds any more to a call for militant action in the event of a massive lay-off of labour or a massive price rise.

Not just the white-collar employees, such as in banks and the insurance sector, who have lost their virulence. Consider the fate of the once-enormously powerful textile trade unions too. Neo-liberal trade policies have led to their disappearance. New service sector occupations are no doubt coming up every day. But the scope of employment there is severely limited; the few who are fortunate enough to get absorbed in these outfits would not dream of joining a trade union; thank you, these are getting along fine; they need no collective bargaining.

A kind of ennui has taken over. The big battle against economic liberalism was practically lost by the end of the 1990s. Processions, hunger marches and such other types of agitation led to nowhere. Huge numbers from the middle class had once marched in seemingly unending processions in support of this or that cause. They courted arrests and often underwent prison sentences. They got sacked from their jobs and faced grave personal difficulties. But they also won quite a few memorable victories. The past, however, is long past. Agitations do not lead to net gains, agitations cause permanent loss of work.

Some of yesterday’s warriors feel despondent, some turn restless. Quite a few tend to lose their faith. They start cutting corners, even in their ruminations. Their lives have been a waste, but their children, who are undergoing intense computer training or taking a course in this or that foreign language, will possibly get an opportunity in one of the up-and-coming service industries, such as in the information technology sector. Tomorrow, therefore, promises to be another day. Perhaps there is also the flicker of another dream: the first cousin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin or Reno, Nevada, is about to get the green card. Once he gets settled in the United States of America, he is likely to swing things for his kinfolk back home.

In one of his later novels, Hard Times, Charles Dickens narrated the travails of the British working class in the early phase of the Industrial Revolution: a handful gained, the overwhelming majority suffered in that period of furious economic growth. It is a re-run of that story over here at this moment. The English working people presumably tried to find compensation for their misery in the abstract thought of being joint owners of the Empire over which the sun never sank. For India’s poor, circa 2010, it is only the vicarious joy at the country’s cricketers scaling one peak of glory after another.

The Telegraph, 1 January, 2010, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100101/jsp/opinion/story_11931213.jsp
 

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