Government Taking Anti-people Steps to Favour Banks and Capitalists
The Reserve Bank of India reduced the rate of interest it charges on loans advanced to commercial banks by 0.25 percent in the first week of April.
Government Taking Anti-people Steps to Favour Banks and Capitalists
The Reserve Bank of India reduced the rate of interest it charges on loans advanced to commercial banks by 0.25 percent in the first week of April. However, the commercial banks passed on only a minor part of the benefits to its borrowers. For instance, State Bank of India and ICICI, the largest public and private bank respectively, reduced the rate of interest on their loans for purchase of homes by only 0.1 percent. The major part of the gain from lowering of rate by RBI is being used by these banks to finance write-offs to big capitalist loan defaulters.
Data recently released by the Reserve Bank of India show that deposits in Indian banksgrew by 9.9% during 2015-16. This is the lowest annual rate of growth of deposits seen in the last 50 years.The low rate of deposit growth reflects the squeeze on real wages of workers and net incomes of peasants and other self-employed. The persistently high inflation in food and other consumer prices during the last few years is making it impossible for crores of working families to deposit any saving in the bank.
Government of India claims that the rate of inflation has fallen compared to last year. However, many daily necessities including dal remain out of their reach for workers and peasants at their current price level of Rs. 150 to 200 per kilogram.
When the global price of crude petroleum oil declines, Government of India raises taxes to the same extent, without changing the price people pay. When oil price rises in the global market, it is passed on as additional burden on the people. It is a completely anti-people policy. People are at the receiving end no matter what happens. Petrol and diesel prices continue to rise and keep fuelling further increase in transport costs and commodity prices.
People Becoming Victims of Government Callousness about Drought
Ten large states – Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – are officially declared drought affected; some of them for the second year in succession. More than one fourth of the country’s population is in the grip of drought – 33 crore people in 256 districts of the country (more than 2.5lakh villages). Nearly 40 percent of the area of the country is affected bythe drought.Water charges constitute an additional burden on working people in many parts of the country where they are buying water at exorbitant prices.
Five Worst Affected States
|
State |
Number of districts affected by drought |
Total number of districts |
Number of people affected, crore |
|
Uttar Pradesh |
50 |
75 |
9.9 |
|
Madhya Pradesh |
46 |
51 |
4 |
|
Maharashtra |
21 |
36 |
3.7 |
|
Jharkhand |
22 |
24 |
3.2 |
|
Karnataka |
27 |
30 |
3.1 |
The situation is so grim for people that the government has been forced to impose Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code in many parts of Maharashtra, to avoid water riots. In some parts of the country, water is supplied only once in 20 days. Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand, has been forced to declare a “water emergency”.Water availability in the country’s 91 reservoirs is at its lowest in a decade, with stocks at a paltry 29% of their total storage capacity, according to the Central Water Commission.
The problem of acute water scarcity has been developing since last year. However, it did not feature in the news media until the situation reached alarming proportions by April 2016. Even today, many big capitalists are expressing joy that the monsoon rains are predicted to be better than average this year. As long as they are able to sell their products in some parts of rural India, the big capitalists do not care if crores of peasant livelihoods get destroyed in the drought affected regions. Drought is turned into an occasion for various officials and contractors to profit by looting the funds provided as “drought relief”.
Out of the total geographical area of India, almost one-sixth area (more than100 districts) with 12% of the populationare officially “chronic drought-affected” areas. Why have we not been able to drought-proof them?It is due to the capitalist orientation of the economy where maximising the profit of the capitalist class takes priority over needs of peasants, workers and toilers in deciding the use of a natural resource like water and the allocation of funds for developing water sources. India’s climate is not particularly dry, nor is it lacking in rivers and groundwater but more than 40% of rainfall is allowed to run away to sea.
The small and medium size peasants of the country have been the worst sufferer of the capitalist path of development of agriculture, pursued by every central government. The necessary resources have not been invested to insulate the farmers from the effects of the variation in rainfall from year to year. After 69 years of the end of the colonial rule, only about one third (36%) of the cropped area of the country is irrigated.
The farmers of the ‘richest state’ like Maharashtra are worst victims of this neglectas only 17 percent of the area is irrigated in the stateeven today. Two large areas of the state – Marathwada and Vidarbha – are prone to drought frequently. Repeated failure of crops and mounting loans have forced more than 20,000 farmers to take their lives since 2001 in Maharashtra, 3200 in 2015 alone, yet the state has shown little concern to address the problems of peasants. Everytime the nature is blamed for their problems and diversions are organized to divert the attention of people. While crores of people of the state are struggling even for drinking water, the state has no shame in justifying full supply of water to capitalists owning half a dozen beer-making factoriesin Marathwada.
The Central government absolves itself of its responsibility to provide a basic necessity of life like water to people by saying ‘water’ is a state subject. “Prioritising use of water, like how much for drinking and how much for irrigation, can be done only by states as it is a state subject. We can only give information on what preparations can be done, like for say, rainwater harvesting,” declared the Union Minister Uma Bharti a few days back.
The Central government claims that it has provided Rs. 20,000 crore to the states in April 2016 for providing jobs to drought affected people in rural areas as a relief measure. But, nearly 60% of the released money will go towards paying wage arrears for the work done last year. That will leave only around Rs. 7500 crore for giving relief to 33 crore people affected by the drought – about Rs. 230 per person to survive for the next few months!! However, the same state gives relief of Rs1.14 lakh crores to a few thousand capitalists by writing off their bank loans during last three years.
Shocking Facts about Water in India
- It is estimated that only 18% of a total rural population of 833 million Indians have access to treated water.
- Only about one-third of rural households in India are reached by piped water supplies. The balance two-third of rural households is still living ‘beyond the pipe’.
- 3)The 2011 census estimates that 138 million rural households, or about 685–690 million people, lack access to safe drinking water.
- More than half of the pipes in rural areas in India deliver untreated water.
- Access to safe water varies greatly from state to state. 36% of the rural population in Andhra Pradesh has access to treated water while, in Bihar, less than 2% of the rural population receives treated water.
- WHO estimates that, in India, about 38 million people are affected by waterborne diseases each year, of which over 75% are children;
- Contaminated water causes nearly 780,000 deaths every year. Diarrhoea alone causes more than 1600 deaths every day.
- India ranks a dismal low 120th out of 122 nations for its water quality and 133rd out of 180 nations for its water availability.