BMS to hold protests against NITI Aayog

The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliate, will hold protests against the NITI Aayog’s “strategic disinvestment” policy in several parts of the country on Friday and Saturday.

“The two day protests would be a precursor to a public rally at New Delhi’s Ramlila Ground in November,” BMS organising secretary Pawan Kumar said. The exact date of the public rally is yet to be finalised, but it is likely to be scheduled once Parliament opens for its winter session.

The BMS upping the ante against the NITI Aayog comes at a time when it finds itself isolated in the trade union movement. In the past three years, the BMS has supported Narendra Modi government at crucial junctures, especially the government’s labour reforms, and has stayed away from the two nationwide labour strikes called by other unions.

The other 10 central trade unions plan to meet on August 8 in New Delhi to decide the dates for their nationwide strike against government’s proposal to disinvest from public sector undertakings and privatise railway stations, ports and docks. The BMS has strong unions in public sector units and risks losing cadre base if it isn’t seen to be opposing disinvestment and privatisation.

At its annual meeting in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, on May 22 to 24, the BMS passed a resolution expressing “deep anguish over the lack of vision and negative attitude” of the “lopsided intellectuals” of NITI Aayog. The resolution said NITI Aayog is anti-worker and “disconnected” with real India and “committed to a powerful corporate lobby”. The resolution was particularly critical of NITI Aayog’s ‘strategic disinvestment’ policy, which it said was “nothing but a sinister design of closure and distress sale of national wealth created by our visionary forerunners.”

Its Kanpur resolution urged the government to “thoroughly reorganise” NITI Aayog.