A recent seminar in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, on 'Employment and Labour Rights' has charged the Government of India of playing in the hands of foreign capitalists. Insisting that this has led to snatching away of crucial jobs, participants in the seminar said, this is the direct result of lack of socialist thinking in economic policies.
Among those who participated in the seminar included Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar, former advocate general Anand Mohan Mathur, national vice-president of the Hind Mazdoor Sabha Harbhjan Singh Sidhu, senior trade union and farmers' leaders and academics. Participants included Century Mills workers strugging for their rights.
Mathur said policies of globalization have helped domestic and foreign capitalists to exert great deal of influence on the employment situation, even as regretting lack of socialist thinking in economic policies in the country. Siddhu, on the other hand, insisted on the need to intensify the struggle for wlrkers' rights by ensuring independence of trade unions.
A top leader of the Indian Railways workers, too, Sidhu said, they have rejected Prime Minister Narendra Modi's efforts to bring in World Bank policies, which aimed at giving complete exemption to exploit workers in the mammoth organization. Criticizing Modi of trying to bring about "anti-people" changes in labour laws, he said, this has been successfully thwarted by trade unions.
Seeking to give equal rights to contract workers, Sidhu criticised large companies like Adanis for seeking to increase their profits by grabbing the mineral wealth of the country and abroad. He added, 76 public sector units are on the verge of being sold.
Azmi Premji University professor of economics Amit Basoli, author of the 'State of Working India' report, told the meet said that the the employment market has changed so much that the number of highly educated unemployed has reached 25% in the country.
He regretted, the situation has come about amidst lack political will towards implementing the rural jobs guarantee scheme, MGNREGA. Criticizing the recent "political move" to suppress the latest National Sample Survey Organization report, he added, this was meant to hide crisis in the employment sector.
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