EVIDENTLY, THE issue of an IMF loan is not just a question of finding a quick solution to an immediate crisis. IMF symbolises a strategy. The strategy which says self-reliance is out, independent industrialisation is out, social welfare is out. These are all gods that have failed. The new gods are capital, market, globalisation. And interestingly, the successors of Gandhi and Nehru, and the neo-nationalist Ram-bhakts are all at one in their vigorous defence of this epochal wedding between ancient India and the new world order.
Where would this strategy take us? Debt-trap is no longer a warning. We are now very much within it. And the noose will only get tighter with every passing day. However much we may hold out the red carpet for foreign capital, and establishment economists may clamour for direct foreign investment as a less evil (or more lucrative?) alternative to the loan, trends are that international capital would prefer to deal with India from a safe distance, with the help of the remote-controlled pincers of debt trap and unequal trade while reserving the direct investment option for havens closer to its heart, like the former socialist nations.
And where do we go from the debt-trap? In a bid to get out of it, we desperately try to accelerate our exports. But with debt repayment obligations increasingly eating into our domestic investment potential and international market closing its doors to our limited manufacturing exports, we are pushed more and more into the export of primary commodities and virtually unprocessed raw materials and minerals at cheaper and cheaper prices. Yes, it is the classical colonial circuit of de-industrialisation. We are reduced to becoming just another source of cheap raw materials for the empires of the West and a happy hunting and dumping ground for their surplus capital and excess produce. In short, a de-industrialised neo-colony with little economic and political sovereignty.
This is not a piece of alarmist fiction. This has been the fate of economies which were once far more successful and vibrant than ours. Even the World Bank's own report on trade reforms in India whose recommendations we are now implementing, visualises the following scenario after five to seven years. GDP declines. The machinery output declines by anything between 10.5 to 16.6 per cent. So does the output of metals. Even the output of transport equipment and electrical appliances and electronics declines. Agricultural output records a small growth of the order of 0.3 to 0.9 per cent. The output of minerals goes up by 1 to 4.3 per cent. Construction declines or at best remains stagnant. The service sector of course continues to grow. And the balance of payments crisis, to cure which the whole reform is ostensibly being carried out remains unchanged at 3 per cent of the GDP.
After all, in economic growth and development as in any other field there can be no substitute for internal dynamism which can only be unleashed through a keen and productive participation of our manpower and an intelligent utilisation of our natural resources and historic experiences and advantages.
We are today standing at the junction of two roads. One road breaks the back of our industrialisation by pauperising the overwhelming majority of our people and permanently converting our economy into a docile supplier of cheap raw materials and primary commodities and a helpless purchaser of costly manufactured goods from the developed industrial powers. The other road industrialises our national economy by revolutionising our agriculture and developing a broad-based industrial edifice on a solid agro-economic foundation and thus ensuring the optimum utilisation of our vast natural and human resources.
One road leads to concentration and centralisation of economic and political power into a few hands. The other leads to economic and political democracy through equitable distribution and decentralisation.
One road leads to abject submission to the imperialist economic and political order as just another pitiable appendage. The other allows us to interact with the world with our heads held high as a champion of anti-imperialist solidarity.
One road leads to humiliation. The other redeems our national honour.
One road invites slavery. The other freedom.
THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW.
NEW ECONOMIC PACKAGE
Perilous Portents for Democracy
ON June 2. 1991 the colour of cement in the small town of Dalla in eastern UP was no longer grey. It turned red that day with the blood of more than 40 workers of the UP Cement Corporation who succumbed to police bullets white protesting a move to hand over their unit to a private business house.
As the IMF stranglehold over government policy grows stronger and the aggressive alliance between domestic big business and foreign multinationals starts celebrating its 'new-found freedom' with a vengeance, it is obvious that the trade unions and Indian workers are going to become the first and most direct target of the violence that underlies this freedom. Privatisation has already begun, and large sections of workers are threatened with the frightening prospect of wage freeze and retrenchment, though for obvious reasons these aspects of the new economic package have not been formally spell out in the policy statements.
But apart from direct repression and showdown, the ruling classes will also seek to browbeat and corner the workers and their trade unions through the trusted tactic of divide and rule. And here they are likely to utilise every division in the ranks of the working people – organised vs unorganised sector, employed vs unemployed, urban vs rural and so on and so forth.
This will have to be beaten back with the counter-strategy of unity-in-action, developing a fighting solidarity of workers of different trades and unions, between workers and peasants and among different segments of working people. Growing attacks on trade union and working class movement can only signal a general onslaught on democratic rights. After all, autocratic South Korea has become the latest model for India's 'free-market democrats'!