A report released by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) reveals that in the past 16 years, the rich have grown richer and the poor poorer. According to the report, the top 20% of our country's population has more than 50% share of the national income in 2009-2010, as compared to the 36.7 % it had in 1993-1994.
A report released by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) reveals that in the past 16 years, the rich have grown richer and the poor poorer. According to the report, the top 20% of our country's population has more than 50% share of the national income in 2009-2010, as compared to the 36.7 % it had in 1993-1994. The share of the national income of the bottom 60%, on the other hand, has fallen from 38.6% to 27.9% in the same period.
This method of calculation itself hides the extremely wide disparities, between the richest capitalists, and the mass of workers and peasants. According to the official National Accounts Statistics (NAS), the class which we call the bourgeois class — those with private property in mines, factories, land and other means of production, earning annual profits, interest or rent income — appropriated 37% of the national income in 2008. The size of this class is likely to be less than 5% of the population. Of course, the NAS does not refer to the bourgeoisie as a class except by description.
The reports of the two government sponsored studies confirm what all our people know — the disparity between the rich and the broad masses of the people has been growing through all these years of implementation of the program of globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation. The studies conducted by the Communist Ghadar Party of India shows that the real wages of the working class have fallen in this period, and vast masses of our peasant brethren have also become worse off on the whole.
The orientation of the economy is to ensure maximum profits through the most savage exploitation of workers and peasants and working people and of the natural resources of our people. This has been the case throughout the 63 years since independence from colonial rule. The ruling bourgeois has given various slogans at various times to fool the toiling masses that both the exploiter and the exploited can prosper with some magic formula. The Congress Party under Nehru’s leadership gave the magic formula of "socialistic pattern of society" 55 years ago. The Congress Party today under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi has given the magic formula of "inclusive growth". This is just two timing. It is aimed at fooling the working class, the peasantry, the tribal peoples, that things are going to be different now, just because the bourgeoisie has coined a new slogan.
We have to remember what we have pointed out many times before that the whole “reform” program that was introduced in the 90’s was with the aim of enriching the biggest monopolies, Indian as well as foreign, through the most savage exploitation and plunder of our labour, land and resources. It was never meant to benefit the working class and peasantry. So the outcome is exactly what the bourgeoisie intended! All along the bourgeoisie has been giving the mantra, that there has to be growth and only then can we think of reducing poverty or unemployment. The argument that has been given time and again by the apologists for this kind of "growth" is that such reforms will eventually lead to more opportunities for all and will have a "trickle down" effect However, the experience of our people over the last 20 years and more has shown that far from 'trickling down', the exact opposite has been the case, that this capitalist imperialist system has ensured growth only for the capitalists at the expense of the toilers.
The orientation of the economy has to be changed from one of maximum plunder, to ensuring prosperity for the people. It is the working masses of town and countryside who create the wealth, not the parasitic exploiters. It is the working masses of town and countryside who have to organise themselves to take charge of the affairs of the country, and reorient the economy to ensure prosperity for all.