5 years and
2 months into the reign of the BJP Govt and the only stark observation that has
hit an avid observer is how the criticisms of jobs and arrested to declining development
of the economy is simply water off the duck’s back to the BJP. After nearly
half a decade of what seems to the normal observer as failures at Economics,
one must wonder whether it is not a failure but actually a solid ideology at
work here.
One need
only look at our northern neighbour, China, here. What was once described as an
Economy on a revisionist and doomed track has clearly demonstrated itself as being
anything but an economy that is doomed to failure. This criticism from the Left,
almost 20-30 years ago is now slowly being modified to make it appear that the
very clearly Capitalist mode of production that is practiced in China is,
Capitalism being used to further Socialism – this is up for debate and knowing
the Chinese, one will never really know the truth; however, we do see the
results and that appears to ratify the theory of Capitalism used to further
Socialism. Of course, why the Global Left isn’t comfortable calling China, “Capitalism
with a Human face” is intriguing. But, if we can free ourselves of nomenclature
and ideological burdens, then we see economics for what it is. The takeaway
from China in all that has been said is that there is a method to what might,
at times, seems like madness.
In the
Indian context, there have been three phases, thus far, of economic ideology:
the planned market economy, the neoliberal model, and now the Post-Neoliberal Indian
model. Clearly, the only good period for the economy has been the neoliberal
period with its massive growth spurt and couple this with the fact that there
was some form of a social security net, there was some trickle down that lifted
the masses but almost permanently disabled a Revolutionary Left movement from
ever being a viable alternative. That side project being completed, of
eliminating the biggest threat to the Bourgeois democracy, the subsequent years
of development could now focus on ensuring the accumulation of wealth to the
Bourgeoisie. It was toward the end of 2014, that this project started crumbling
and inevitably, with a stagnation of incomes and opportunities. The post-2014
scenario was when the new paradigm shift began. What was this shift? The shift
clearly is to seemingly modernise existing industry to shift away from Production
to Services, from Agriculture to Industry, and finally to transform Labour into
a Service sector scavenger rather than a value producer.
This would
tie in very well with the 5-year long slump in Job creation for the Nation and
the Government not really giving a damn about it. The ideological bent of the
economists in govt here is to change the Indian worker from one that works in a
factory to one that is either working in a start-up industry, tech, or in the so-called
Gig economy. The government clearly also realises that such a transition is one
that takes decades to implement and will inevitably run into a phase of high
unemployment in the interim; as jobs in the new economy, firstly, don’t really
exist and secondly, the industry itself is not big enough or aligned to high
employment. This is of course a problem of Neoliberal economic ideology, where the
reality and material conditions of the world are ignored, and the focus is more
on a Utopian end objective. It is even further incompetence on the part of a
Govt to continue to follow a Neoliberal model that has already been proven to
be a failed economic system world over.
In some other
innocuous ways, we also see the policy of the destruction of the Indian Baniya
Class or the Petty Bourgeois class along with the Hindu Middle Class. This would
seem counterintuitive as these are the sponsors and core support bases of the Hindu
fascist right; however, both these sections of society are also those who have stopped
India from achieving any form of progress. The Petty Bourgeois in India were
supremely powerful in influencing policy and trade decisions in India.
Ironically, this proved to be a certain barrier against the worst effects of
Globalised American Imperialism. This is a problem for the Corporations and the
highest echelons of the Bourgeoisie. Thus, with the BJP as a party that is now
run almost exclusively by corporate funds and not petty bourgeoisie funds, has
thus trained its guns on its erstwhile baniya support base. Retail FDI was one
danger that was taken too lightly by everyone and today, it is no mystery that
the likes of Amazon and Walmart have a good ability to end Baniya hegemony of Indian
business in a decade.
The Hindu
Middle Class is much more complicated. This class has traditionally been very
opinionated, are getting larger in number and are not supine enough to allow
being ridden roughshod over. Thus, the attack… on the middle class incomes, employment,
welfare, and infrastructure began. Labour unions and worker collectivisation is
almost a crime in many states in India thus ensuring that the Middle Class
cannot be heard when they scream. This was not done in 2014 but rather way
before when liberalization began. The entire ideology of the middle class thus
changed to pander to an alienated, class-unconscious, numbed population. 2014’s
fascist turn of the Hindu Middle Class was an exercise in the shift from Class
consciousness to Reactionary, Ethno-Religious Nationalism. De-jargonised, this basically
meant that the urban, Hindu Middle class was now chugging on the opium of bigotry,
casteism, bloodlust, to ensure that no matter how much they were economically
whipped to death, they stood by the very govt that was whipping them. This
movement will continue and it will achieve a critical velocity after which it
cannot slow down. The middle class will then start to eat into its own and
fracture and fragment, become sectarian to the point where they weed out the
infidels among them.
The big question
is where does all this end? If one was to sketch out a picture it will be one of where the Lower Classes in
agriculture have all migrated to the cities for sustenance thus forming an army
of the Unemployed to ensure that wages are perpetually low, agriculture will be
corporatized, industrial might will not only be in the hands of the few but it
will also be in the hands of foreign capital, unemployment will mostly remain
at the levels you observe today because 10 years of any aberrant phenomena
become a material reality in India, and eventually the so called Indian growth
story will eventually die off like it has for nearly every developing country.
The misery of today will stagnate where we have the growth of an African sub-Saharan
nation or a member of east European nations, but without the labour mobility.
