The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Bardhan expresses concern over rise of neo-liberalism

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Saturday, Jun 02, 2007
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Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Bardhan expresses concern over rise of neo-liberalism

Special Correspondent

Says people's movements have the potential to reverse the trend

ENDOWMENT LECTURE : A.B. Bardhan, CPI general secretary, delivering a lecture at a seminar on socio-economic development in India, in Chennai on Friday. — Photo: S. Thanthoni

CHENNAI: Communist Party of India general secretary A.B. Bardhan on Friday expressed concern over the rise of neo-liberalism, under which huge corporations dictated global trade and commerce and decided the economic policies that should prevail, eroding economic sovereignty and regulatory powers of nation-states.

Delivering the `Comrade Tarakeswar Chakraborti Memorial Endowment Lecture,' titled "Some Trends in Socio-Economic Development in India," at a seminar held by the All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) in association with the University of Madras, he said, "growing people's movements in countries of the world have the potential to reverse this trend."

Race for FDI

Mr. Bardhan referred to the race for foreign direct investment (FDI) among the developing countries, including India. These countries wanted to allow FDI as an effort to get back from the old imperialist powers a part of what had been actually taken away from them as tributes in the past. "But it is important to see that in the bargain this does not become a means of renewed economic and cultural domination," he said.

Attempts to blindly copy the reforms as practised in the West and other countries, or to apply the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank resulted in growing disparities in India, he said.

According to Mr. Bardhan, the employment situation in the country was extremely grim. Employment in the public sector had gone down due to several Government measures and it had declined in the private sector also. In the rural areas, much of the job-creation was distress jobs, which, by no stretch of imagination, could be called employment. Referring to a study undertaken by ASSOCHAM last year, he said though during 1997-2003 the Indian economy witnessed an increase in GDP by an average of 5.2 per cent, the employment trend declined by 4.14 per cent in the organised sector.

The share of workers' wages and salaries in the total cost of production had also sharply declined revealing the growing exploitation, Mr.Bardhan said.

SEZs

He flayed attempts to acquire large tracts of fertile land for setting up of special economic zones (SEZs) though official circles considered them to be new instruments of growth. "The spate of agitations and militant resistance by farmers everywhere to such acquisitions of land do not seem to have taught any lesson to the Governments and entrepreneurs."

Even the World Trade Organisation, with its pronounced pro-reform outlook, had expressed doubts over the efficacy of the SEZs in boosting investment and employment, he said.

Stressing the need for radical land reform measures, he said contract and corporate farming after reversing ceiling and tenancy laws would only turn the farmers into wage labour and make agriculture an appendage of capitalism.

He called for measures to organise Indian retail trade without making it the victim of big business and multinationals.

Head of Department of Economics, University of Madras, Udhuman Mohideen, spoke on "Implications of 12th Finance Commission Recommendations." General secretary of the AIBEA C.H. Venkatachalam recalled Chakraborti's service to the cause of the trade union movement.

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