RSS labour wing for special farm packages

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), the labour wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), has warned the government that the economy will take a turn for the worse unless it comes up with special packages to boost farming and small and medium manufacturers, and halts planned bank mergers, disinvestment and strategic sale of public sector units.

While the Narendra Modi government has described the slowdown, which pushed economic growth down to an over six-year low of 5% in the quarter to June, as a cyclical process, the Opposition has blamed its economic policies for the downturn evidenced by high-frequency indicators such as auto sales.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in August the state of the economy was deeply worrying and although India has the potential to grow much faster, all-round mismanagement by the government had resulted in this slowdown. Now the BMS, which claims to represent more than 6,000 registered trade unions and boasts of a membership of 30 million, has also sounded the alarm.

“If we don’t take actions now, we will soon be back at the Manmohan line. It was the time between 2 0 1 2 - 1 3 when t he growth rate hovered between 4.8% and 5%. The government’s reliance on failed advisors has resulted in lowering of growth figures. Instead of foreign-returned experts in NITI Aayog, the government needs to consult organisations at the ground level to draft policy,” said Saji Narayanan, national president of BMS.

The compound annual growth rate of gross domestic product during the Congress-led UPA’S first term (2004-05 to 2008-09), second term (2009-10 to 2013-14) and the Modi government’s first term (2014-15 to 2018-19) was 6.7%, 6.4% and 7.5%, respectively.

In an interview with HT, Narayanan said the government needs to announce a special package for the revival of labourintensive sectors such as textiles, agriculture and micro, small and medium enterprises. “There i s a t r e nd t o move towards contractual appointments even in the government sector; jobs are shrinking, so there should be urgent steps to gi ve a boost t o t he MSMES instead of opening up FDI {foreign direct investment.”

The BMS leader said sops such as payment of ₹6,000 annua l l y t o f a r mers under t he PM-KISAN scheme were stopgap measures that had been announced i n r esponse to extreme farm distress.