February 2, 2022
Sukhendu Sekhar Ray speaks during the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sir, regarding the President of India’s address, the immediate reaction that came to my mind was that it was conceited, self-promoting, charlatan. It reminded me of an old ghazal of Sahir Ludhiyanvi. The ghazal was composed by Ravi aur yeh gaya tha Mahendra Kapoor ji ne 1974 film Goonj mein. Is film mein jo gaana compose kiya tha Ravi ji ne aur comose kiya tha Sahir Ludhiyanvi ne, uss se char line padhna chahta hoon: “Yeh rah kahan se hain, yeh rah kahan tak hain/ Yeh raz koi raahi samjha hain na jaana hain/ Ek dhund se aana hai, ek dhund me jana hain/ Itna hi fasana hain.”
Sir, to me the entire speech of the Honourable President is covered with goonj or myths. Now let me unfold the mystery scenario projected in the President’s Address. Firstly, in paragraph 14, the Honourable President has quoted Babasaheb Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, saying, “My ideal would be a society based on liberty, equality and fraternity.” What is the performance of this government insofar as equality is concerned? If I put this question to myself, pat comes the reply that I should go through the Oxfam report published in January this year which, inter alia, says that the income of 24 per cent of households in the country declined in 2021 but at the same time, the number of Indian billionaires grew from 102 to 142. The Oxfam report, released ahead of the World Economic Forum held at Davos, also found that the country’s healthcare budget saw a 10 per cent decline from the revised estimate of 2021. There was a 6 per cent cut in the allocation for education as per the Oxfam report, while the budgetary allocation for social security schemes declined from 1.5 per cent of the total Union Budget to 0.6 per cent.
The India supplement of the global report also says that in 2021, the collective wealth of India’s 100 richest people reached a record high of Rs 57.3 lakh crore or 775 billion US dollars. In the same year, the share of the bottom 50 per cent of the population in the national wealth was a mere 6 per cent. Indians, meanwhile, have been estimated to have fallen into extreme poverty in 2020, with nearly half of the global poor residing in India, according to the United Nations. The report says this surge comes at a time when India’s unemployment rate was as high as 15 per cent in urban areas and the healthcare system is on the brink of collapse. According to Oxfam India’s CEO, “stark reality of inequality contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day or one person every four seconds”.
This report also indicates that a particular company, which ranked 24th globally and second in India, witnessed its net worth multiply by eight times in a span of one year, from 8.9 billion US dollars in 2020 to 50.5 billion US dollars in 2021. Another company’s worth doubled in 2021 to 85.5 billion US dollars from 36.8 billion US dollar in 2020. This is the economic disparity that has occurred in the last financial year in India. The Oxfam report also points out the increase in indirect taxes as a share of the Union Government’s revenue in the last four years, while the proportion of corporate tax in the same period iwas declining. The additional tax imposed on fuel rose 33 per cent in the first six months of 2021 as compared to the previous year, 79 per cent more than the pre-COVID level. At the same time, the wealth tax for the super-rich was abolished in 2016. The lowering of corporate taxes from 30 per cent to 22 per cent last year, to attract investments, resulted in a loss of Rs 1.5 lakh crore, which contributed to the increase in India’s fiscal deficit, the report says, but there was no increase in private investment in spite of so much avenues given by the government. The report further says that despite the country’s federal structure, the structure of revenue collection kept the reins of resources in the Centre’s hands, and yet the management of the pandemic was left to the states who were not equipped to handle it with their meagre financial and human resources.
Sir, now, if you go through this, this is the real picture of inequality. This is how this economic disparity has affected the entire nation, not only during COVID but even before and after that. This is the real picture of inequality among the richest, rich, middle-class, marginalised and the poorest of the poor of the country. What a splendid achievement of this NDA Government for the past seven years!
According to estimates by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, two crore Indians lost their jobs in April-May 2021. In October 2021, at least 5.46 million Indians lost jobs and in November last year, six million salaried jobs were lost. There is no whisper in the President’s Address about the alarming joblessness in the country due to the policy paralysis of the Union Government. This government had assured that there will be creation of jobs for two crore unemployed youth every year, and this is the rea picture that the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s data says.
Let us see what the Honourable President has stated in paragraph 79 of his speech. I would like to quote only one line with your permission: “Today, the country’s achievements and successes are as limitless as the country’s potential and possibilities.” This has been stated in paragraph 79, but according to the Oxfam report again, of January ’22, India has fallen in all international indices. For example; the Human Development Index rank is 131 out of 189; in Hunger Index, India’s rank is 94 out of 101 countries; Peace, 139 out of 163; Happiness, 144 out of 153; Healthcare, 145 out of 195; gender gap, 140 out of 156; environment, 168 out of 180; internet quality, 79 out of 85; water quality, 120 out of 122; Press Freedom, 142 out of 180; per capita GDP, 142 out of 189, and health expenditure, as percentage of GDP, one of the lowest in the world. The expenditure on education is among the lowest in the world. The National Education Policy of 1968 recommended spending 6 per cent of GDP on education, but so far, we have allocated only 3 per cent.
“Isi safalta ke saath, desh aaj ‘Amritkaal’ mein pravesh kar rahe hai,” said the President in his Address. Amrit 142 millionaire pee rahe hai, aur desh ki aam janta jo pee rahe hai, woh amrit nahin hai, halahal hai, halahal. Jaise ki samudra manthan ke samay Prabhu Mahadev halahal pee ke Neelkanth ho gaye the, hamara aam janta ka naseeb mein aage jo halahalkaal aa rahe hai, na jane kya bhayankar sthiti payda hogi. Yeh Sarkar bolte hain bahut, yeh Sarkar bolte hai bahut, lekin iske asliyat kya hai? Madhupisthithi jheuhage hridaye tu halahalam”.
Sir, there are other achievements too of the government, for example the surgical attack on federalism which otherwise is a basic structure of the Constitution as ruled by the Supreme Court of India. The Home Ministry recently extended the jurisdiction of the Border Security Force from 15 km to 50 km in the States bordering Bangladesh and Pakistan without having any discussion with the concerned States. This unilateral decision on the part of the Central Government is an attempt at coercion upon the elected State governments having international borders. Similarly, the recent fatwa proposing amendments to IAS Cadre Rules is arbitrary and is a veiled attempt to centralise the executive powers of the States. Already nine chief ministers and 109 literate IAS, IFS and IPS officers have vehemently opposed this unilateral and arbitrary decision of the Union Government.
Sir, constitutional heads in the opposition-ruled states are behaving like political functionaries and interfering in the day-to-day administration of the States. They are challenging the policy decisions of the governments and, day in and day out, are coming out with press statements criticising the State Governments. This is unprecedented and is a surgical attack on our federal structure.
Sir, this government has forgotten the first article of the Constitution of India, the very first article, Article 1, which says, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States” and therefore, not a unitary state. But these steps of the government are actually supporting in the transformation of this country into a unitary state to help strengthen the passage of totalitarianism.
There is the assault on constitutional and statutory institutions like Election Commission of India, CVC, CBI, etc., which are also being exploited for political advantage of the ruling party against the opposition party. Most of these institutions have turned to be breeding grounds for selected groups of retired government servants who are not only being appointed by the government to serve them, beyond their service tenures, but are also getting extension after extension in their extended service careers. But the government is not satisfied with that only. This is why, on the National Voters’ Day, the Honourable Law Minister said, “In the name of independence of judiciary, independence of Election Commission, independence of legislature and executive, if there is no coordination, then how will we work, how will one run the country?”. Hence, the government wants to have a committed judiciary, a conducive Election Commission and agencies, and so on and so forth in the name of so-called coordination. The President’s speech has not addressed this growing problem of attack on time-tested institutions and authorities.
In the name of economic reforms, the government has emerged as a ‘Bictator Sarkar’, that is a seller government, as it has decided to sell out almost all public properties. These are PSU banks, insurance companies and even profit-making public sector enterprises. The PSU banks earned a net profit of Rs, 31,820 crore in one year, that is, during the last fiscal, 2020-21, which is the highest in the last five years. Yet, the government wants to sell PSU banks to the private sector, for which the Banking Nationalisation (Amendment) Act is reportedly in the offing. The government policy is to privatise profits of the public sector on the one hand and to nationalise losses of the private sector, on the other.
I am giving one example. Vodafone Idea, the private telecom company, owes the government Rs 1,70,000 crore, whereas Rs 16,000 crore has been invested by the government in its share capital. Is this not crony capitalism? On one hand, bad loans written off by the public sector banks from 2001-2021 amount to Rs 9,88,160 crore, with Rs 1,31,894 crore written off in 2021 alone, while on the other, the public sector banks have reduced their rate of interest on savings account from 6 per cent to 2.9 per cent, and on fixed deposits from around 12 per cent to 5 per cent to the detriment of the interest of the common people. The senior citizens are the ones mostly affected. This is something like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
In spite of such writing off of bad loans, they have not come down. According to estimates, new bad loans in 2021 figured at Rs 2,02,879 crore. As on March 31, 2021, and this is a surprising figure, the loan amount due in the top four NPA accounts of public sector banks stands at Rs 89,300 crore. Who are these big fishes who have eaten public deposit from public sector banks? Why has the government not shown the courage to name them, let alone taking criminal action against them for openly looting public money? I’m sorry to say the President’s Address does not reflect anything on the measures supposed to have been taken by the government to arrest this unholy nexus.
Then, there is the case of the revelations made by international consortia of investigating journalists through the Panama papers, the Paradise papers and of late, the Pandora papers. More than a thousand Indians have stashed black money outside the country in offshore tax havens. How many of them have been arrested and how much black money has been recovered? Publish a white paper. I urge the government to publish a white paper, the way Pranab Mukherjee, when he was the Finance Minister, did in 2012. He published a white paper on black money. If this government has the courage to inform the people about the actions taken to unearth black money, let it publish a white paper on black money, following the footsteps of the late Pranab Mukherjee.
Sir, before I conclude, I would like to refer to a portion of a speech delivered by the Honourable Justice DY Chandrachud, eminent jurist of the Supreme Court, published by The Indian Express on August 29, 2021, wherein the Honourable Justice said, and it is in the public domain as it was delivered online: ”Speaking truth to power is not only a right but also the duty of every citizen and a way to achieve this is by strengthening public institutions, such as ensuring the freedom of the press and the integrity of elections, acknowledging and celebrating the plurality of opinions, and by committing oneself to the search for truth as a key aspiration of society.” Hence, if I believe in the freedom of the press, I cannot characterise the media as ‘supari media’, and even if I have no faith in this government, I cannot term this government as ‘supari government’ because that will be an irresponsible act on my part as a parliamentarian. Justice DY Chandrachud also said: “One cannot only rely on the state to determine the truth as it may not always be free of falsehood.”
Sir, in this quest for truth, I am asking myself as to whether I should believe that The New York Times is lying, The Citizen Lab is lying, Amnesty is lying, the French government is lying, the German government is lying, the US government is lying, Apple and WhatsApp, which have sued NSO, are lying, and only the Government of India stands in splendid isolation with the truth about Pegasus. This is my submission, Sir. With these words, I conclude.
Thank you, Sir.
