Shadow Correspondent
Jammu, Mar, 08
Rising vegetable prices, LPG, transport costs and house rents are slowly squeezing household budgets forcing families to cut down on their food budgets and leaving them with virtually nothing to save. This was stated by former Minister and senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla while addressing huge women gathering at Haripur, Phalian Mandal. Addressing on the occasion, former Minister said rising borrowing costs have dashed household dreams and soaring prices of food and vegetables forcing poor to change their lifestyle. “The government on the other hand doing nothing to control prices and the same is not reflecting on the ground. Bhalla blamed the government for failing to tackle prices and making life difficult for the common man. Charging the Narendra Modi government of failing to fulfill its commitment to women, made during the public rallies by Mr Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Bhalla said the policies of the government only serve to hide the ‘anti-women’ agenda of the BJP.Statistics about violence against women are often bandied about, but we need to work on the solutions, with urgency. We must care about women’s safety and security, and we must care about their freedom. They are citizens who must have an economic, political and social voice – as guaranteed by the Constitution of India.It was a Congress government that introduced gender budgeting, and our policies like MNREGA have kept women in mind at every step – be it equal wages, involvement in audits, and direct payment into bank accounts.
Bhalla maintained that Indian women, whatever their other social identities, deserve equal rights in inheritance, marriage, separation, spousal support and so on. We are committed to this cause. Along with economic empowerment, it is pertinent that our country demands equal political representation of women. While panchayats in many states have 50 percent reservation for women, they are still shamefully under-represented in state assemblies and Parliament. Only 11 percent of seats are occupied by women currently, and this must change. The Congress championed the women’s reservation bill in Parliament, and passed it in the Rajya Sabha, but, unfortunately, it lapsed. We offer our wholehearted support to its passage.We need women to frame policy, to strengthen party organisations, and to lead us to a fairer future. Historically, Congress has been at the forefront of the struggle for women’s rights, equality and empowerment. India’s only woman Prime Minister, Smt. Indira Gandhi, belonged to the Congress. We passed many laws that empowered women. We mainstreamed gender in government schemes, added Bhalla.
Bhalla maintained that sustained spike in food inflation has a damaging effect on India’s poor, higher food prices would put pressure on earnings, which are already very low, and decrease household savings at a time when there is widespread economic pain in the country.This rise in prices is coming at a time when employment and livelihoods have collapsed. Many people who lost their jobs during the pandemic, and even before because of the economic slowdown, have not been able to find new employment. Those who have jobs are often working at significantly lower wages while the incomes of most self-employed people are a fraction of their previous levels. There is no doubt that there has been a significant increase in poverty and hunger. The government’s policy of increasing taxes on fuels was a big factor behind higher inflation which has a negative bearing on millions of self-employed Indians and small businesses, who, along with tens of millions of informal sector workers, have been the worst hit from economic damage.The current trend of higher inflation is “in the nature of cost-push inflation”, which is a result of some supply chain bottlenecks, and the government’s attempt to increase taxes on fuel in order to increase its tax revenues during an economic crisis, said Bhalla.
The fact that the government keeps raising taxes on diesel and petrol is a hugely important contributory factor to inflation across the economy because diesel is an input into every thing.”We are a country that has hundreds of millions of poor people and that makes us quite unlike most other countries,” he said. “The government’s attitude to both public spending and to food distribution is a complete mystery,” said Bhalla. “Why spend less during the pandemic when the government is the only agency in the economy that can actually spend freely? Even before the pandemic, India’s economy was slowing down and none of the four engines–consumption, investment, exports and public expenditure–that drive economic growth were firing strongly, said Bhalla. The government should immediately ramp up spending toward state governments and on central schemes that have a high multiplier effect such as on employment programmes, health and education, suggested Bhalla. But most importantly, the government must fix the supply chain bottlenecks that would bring down cost-push inflation. However, Bhalla said that a more serious worry for the government should be falling household savings–which would discourage investments in the economy–and the government should bring in a variety of policy fixes to reverse the trend.
The government needs to intervene at the household level to cushion the pain in the economy, said Bhalla. One way to do so, he suggested, was by going ahead with the promise of the social security code and bringing in an old age pension scheme for unorganised workers who are already over 60 years of age. “There is a large cohort of workers past the retirement age who do not receive anything and have no source of income. Give them some money; this will not cost the government a lot.”It would force the older workers out of the labour force and make way for younger workers to enter at a time when labour force participation rate is falling.
But with declining household incomes and savings, there is a real threat of a future consumption slowdown in the economy, which could lead to another spell of economic slowdown. For instance, a dip in household savings and lack of government spending–which would result in shrinking of India’s already tight domestic market–could lead to negative investor sentiment, hurting the investment cycle, which, in turn, could begin a slowdown in the economy, added Bhalla.
