Sir,
I am writing to thank you for carrying the article entitled `Bypassing of Rajya Sabha to push the monopoly capitalist agenda’ in the April 16-30, 2017 issue of MEL, which is a detailed report on 5 bills tabled in the Lok Sabha during March as “money bills”.
This article is illuminating and educative, and is an object lesson in the manner in which the bourgeoisie works through parliament to entrench itself and to seek maximum benefit from the Indian economic and political system. These bills are the Finance Bill and 4 bills related to the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
It has been pointed out in the article that this year’s Finance Bill is an extraordinary piece of legislation which carries amendments to even the Representation of the People Act, the Reserve Bank Act and so on. What these suggest is that the agenda of the Government is to legitimize influence-mongering and bankrolling of political parties and institutions, which takes place anyway. The reason to do this is to equip the most powerful and the richest with the greatest influence and to push out smaller players within the exploiting minority. In the last couple of decades enormous money power has been concentrated into the hands of corporate elites who seek to play and more and more definitive role in the affairs of the country, under the banner of good governance and ease of investment and so on, and would like to remove all obstructions to their own progress. Furthermore, the GST bills in Lok Sabha are geared to meeting the demands of the big bourgeoisie who seek to control top down the revenues of the country, and essentially replace many local and state taxes by a central tax, thereby weakening the federal structure and concentrating more power into the hands of the Centre.
The article further carries a box with a detailed historical note on the origin of Money Bills and their history in British statecraft. This is an important reminder that India is ruled today not very differently from the way in which Britannia ruled India as her dominion. Stated differently, the instruments of state power have given brown masters the methods to rule India in the way the white masters did pre-1947.
I thank you for carrying this important article and for conveying the conclusions of the article, which are that the pathway ahead of us for the country is one in which money power will rule the roost in a manner not seen before. This is achieved by parliamentary means and by using parliamentary democracy to sort out differences between the exploiting classes, with no trickle down at all to the people. Furthermore, with each passing year, the burden on the people increases to back-breaking proportions. Each of these should convince the working class that it has to work ever hard to bring in a different system for the benefit of the people of India. A system that will vest sovereignty in the people.
Sincerely,
S. Nair, Kochi