2 December 2016: Since 10 November 2016, 47 people have died in bank queues. Lakhs of workers, especially migrants, have lost their jobs. Lakhs of small and middle peasants have missed the harvest or sowing cycle due to lack of money. Over 4 crore workers have not been paid their wages. Tens of thousands of hawkers and street vendors have lost their livelihood. And an incalculable number of people have failed to access basic services including critical access to medical care due to lack of access to money. These are the visible costs of demonetisation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 currency notes in the first three weeks of the launch of the policy. In the coming days this desperation will push workers into more unsafe and less secure jobs than they already are in. There is every likelihood that things will get worse as government is not prepared with adequate currency notes. Even if adequate currency was made available, with 6 out of every 10 people of the country still removed from the banking system, the majority of people cannot access cash.
That this policy will not garner ‘black money’ as is now well understood. It is widely accepted that the largest part of ‘black money’ is not kept by big businessmen and traders in cash but is held in gold, in property and in foreign bank accounts. It is equally clear that government lacked the legislative power to bring people holding ‘black money’ to book through the demonetisation mechanism and now desperately trying to pass an amendment to the Income Tax Act for this purpose.
Beyond the rhetoric of recovering ‘black money’ it is apparent that the demonetisation exercise is aimed at quite something else. Demonetisation has come at the end of a year in which the BJP government sought and failed to gain complete control over workers’ Provident Fund following the wide spread protests in Bengaluru city.
The BJP government having failed to jump start the economy recognises that it faces a crisis as it cannot deliver on its promises of both job creation and low inflation through higher levels of investment. The inability to drive up investment is in-part due to the bank’s bad loan problem, in part due to the global economic situation and over reliance on foreign investment which has not materialised. Most of all economic growth has failed due to the lack of confidence the business community has in the BJP government’s capacity to grow the economy. This is despite the fact that the BJP government has placed private business at the centre of its economic policy.
The demonetisation policy comes with the objective of pulling the monetary resources of working people and channelizing them through banks into investment into BJP government determined programmes that are targeted at certain sections of the economy and people. It is now widely acknowledged that demonetisation will result in a sharp drop in economic activity by 2.5% or even more. All economic deceleration hurts working people more than any other and contributes to greater inequality. Such a sharp and sudden deceleration will have an untold effect on the country’s working and poor people pushing them to further to marginalisation. Women, who are most excluded from the banking system, will be marginalised most of all. Any growth spurt that follows will not bring them back even to their present state and just contribute to a greater concentration of income and wealth skews the economy further against the most disadvantaged. Demonetisation will in fact squeeze the most marginalised workers and peasants who have no access to the banking system and survive on small amounts of cash, draw their meagre resources into the banking system and place them at the disposal of capital.
Demonetaisation has also come at the end of two-and-a-half years of efforts to push workers outside ESIC with at best limited success. This also comes after the BJP government without notice pushed through amendments to the Factories Act in the Lok Sabha in the closing hours of the monsoons session of parliament and now looks for a political climate in which to get it past the RajyaSabha. Should the BJP government succeed it will make work more unsafe and insecure than it already is which represents the BJPs core commitment to capital.
These actions of the BJP government have come at the end of a long phase of the BJP, the RSS and their affiliate organisations launching an unrestrained attack on historically discriminated castes, especially dalits, locking out the peoples of Jammu and Kashmir from a democratic dialogue while seeking to consolidate its majoritarian Hindutva agenda by creating a war like situation through its so called ‘surgical strikes’ against Pakistan.
As the politics of majoritarianism overtakes ours and other parts of the world, we, on this 2 December – on this Bhopal Day, as we recall those who have suffered because of the Bhopal Gas Disaster, continue our resistance for safe and secure work as we also strengthen our resolve for a world with economic and social justice.