Without being boastful, let me mention here that I was either an organiser or a member of the Kolkata Group that Nobel-laureate Amartya Sen constituted which met at Taj Bengal once a year in the first half of the first decade of the 21st century. 

The Group, which had as its members the then West Bengal Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury, Congress leader Kapil Sibal, actor Sharmila Tagore, economist Jean Dreze, public health expert Prof Srinath Reddy, among others, played a significant role in promoting three programmes.

One was later known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MNREGA). The other two were the National Food Security Act and the National Rural Health Mission. Since the Left Front was supporting the United Progressive Alliance government led by Dr Manmohan Singh, the recommendations of the Kolkata Group would definitely have influenced the government.

It is entitled to claim that the rural job guarantee scheme was conceptualised and promoted at its meetings. There were many among the armchair experts, who pooh-poohed the job scheme as a wastage of public money. 

When the UPA returned to power in 2009, the one reason mentioned for its success was the job scheme under which every able-bodied person was assured of 100 days’ job in a year. True, at Rs 100 a day, it did not amount to much but for a jobless person, something was better than nothing.

I remember Jean Dreze, the master draftsman, who is now a member of the economic advisory council in Tamil Nadu, working day and night to prepare a draft statement on the proposed food security law. He used his enormous field experience to argue that the best place to store food grains was the stomach and the state stood to gain by feeding the poor.

Again, many lampooned the idea but when it became a law, under which a certain quantity of grain was available either free of cost or on a nominal price, people realised its progressive nature. For once the people realised that they had a right to food or, at least, to have the wherewithal to access food.

The national rural health mission was a bold attempt to increase the spending on public health from the abysmal 1-2 per cent of the GDP to at least 3-4 per cent. It arrested the trend of privatisation of the health sector and tried to make healthcare affordable to the poor.

Allowance has to be made for the fact that all these people-friendly programmes which entailed a huge expenditure were initiated when the international price of crude oil was at its highest. The UPA-2 had to spend Rs 5.75 lakh crore to subsidise petroleum products, especially kerosene and LPG.

When Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, he was blessed with a situation in which the international crude oil prices were plummeting. Suddenly, he found the government flush with huge sums of money by way of savings on the oil imports.

He could have at least kept the retail price of petrol, diesel, kerosene and LPG stable so that the people could benefit from the fall in crude oil price. After all, Modi had come to power promising a cut in oil prices.

Far from that, he has been increasing the retail prices of oil so much so that today the petrol price has crossed the Rs 100-rupee mark in many states. As a result, prices of all essential items have gone up. Inflation is now at an all-time high in recent times.

Such a situation has arisen with the wholesale price index-based inflation hitting 12.94 per cent in May last. More worrisome, consumer price index-based inflation has touched 6.3 per cent. What’s worse, all indications are that both wholesale and consumer prices are bound to increase in the near future. 

The Reserve Bank considers a four per cent increase in CPI-based inflation as acceptable. It does not cause any concern even if it drops or increases by 2 per cent. Any increase over 6 per cent, more so when there is no slackening in sight, causes concern. Sooner than later, the people will start feeling the pinch, a situation no elected government would like to countenance.

Remember the price rise happens when tens of millions of people have either lost their jobs or their income has been curtailed. True, the villain of the piece has been the Covid-19 pandemic that has caused havoc to the economy. 

The thoughtless manner in which the Prime Minister imposed the lockdown in 2020 giving just a four-hour notice to the people accentuated the problem to a great extent. This was done before they recovered from another act of madness — banning of high-denomination currency notes.

Today the people have to pay through their nose for pulses, cooking oil, LPG and medicines. Inflation is not confined to India. Reports from China suggest that the government there has been taking several steps to keep the prices under control. After all, the Tiananmen Square protest was prompted by a price rise. 

The world is also worried about how inflation in China will affect the world market given the fact that the dragon country is the world’s single largest factory. The recent Fed data in the US suggest that inflation is on the rise there too. There has also been a huge increase in the Americans’ savings in banks as options for spending have narrowed because of the pandemic.

Unlike the US which announced a stimulus package worth $1.9 trillion, India did not even think of such an option. True, the Central and state governments have been investing in the health sector. They have also announced supply of food-grains free of cost to the poor. 

Nonetheless, a proper stimulus package like in Germany or Britain could have left the people with money which would have eventually kickstarted the economy. It’s in this context that people remember the pro-people policies of the UPA government, in contrast to the NDA’s.

Had the government used the rural job scheme, the food security law and the rural health mission as instruments to deal with the pandemic, it would have made a huge impact. For instance, the job scheme could have been modified to provide 200 days of job at Rs 500-600 a day.

It would have helped the poor to survive. The money the people earned would have helped to revive the economy and create infrastructure like roads and ponds. Similarly, the food security measures would have obviated the need to announce any special measures to fight hunger.

The national rural and urban health missions could have been tweaked to meet the health needs of the people during the first and second waves of Covid-19. 

Alas, the Prime Minister who wanted everything to be changed or rebuilt from the Planning Commission to the Parliament building to his own house to the Central Vista to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund had no use for such programmes. All he needed to do was to strengthen the existing programmes.

Instead, he set up an opaque PM Cares Fund and virtually dumped the health missions. As a result, the people have nowhere to go, as they suffer from untold miseries. The condition of the economy is like the Central Vista the British had developed along what was known as the King’s Path and the Queen’s Path. Hundreds of trees have been cut and the well-manicured lawns have been turned upside down.

Welfare of the people is no longer the prime objective of the government. Modi’s friends in the corporate sector like Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani have become richer and richer as his voters have become poorer and poorer.

All his programmes like the Skill India, Make in India, job creation and digital economy are in a shambles. Nothing underscores his failure than the fact that his party president in Kerala, K Surendran, had ended up carrying tonnes of cash in the guise of worship materials to party candidates.

Modi does not have the moral courage to ask Surendran to step down and face an agnipariksha like the one Sita was forced to undergo. That is because they know that Surendran would be burnt to ashes unlike Sita who came out unscathed from the test of fire.

All this has not dimmed the Sangh Parivar’s enthusiasm to usher in what it perceives to be Hindutva. Hatred is what it has been sowing. In Assam, we have a chief minister who wants to restrict the beneficiaries of all government programmes to only those who have two children.

Himanta Biswa Sarma forgets the fact that he himself has four brothers. I won’t blame his parents but how can he deny the benefits of any programme to the third or fourth or fifth child? The fellow also advised Muslim women, whom he thinks are all from Bangladesh, that they should curtail their procreational activity.

What he does not know is that Bangladesh is far ahead of Assam on all indices of growth like literacy, women’s education, women’s mortality rate and infant mortality rate. 

What’s more, the per capita income of Bangladesh is more than that of India. At the present rate at which Bangladesh grows, the day is not far off when Sarma’s compatriots would like to go to Bangladesh for jobs and better living.

By then, India under Modi would have become a nation where the latest Lamborghini and Rolls Royce will have to stay behind cows that will luxuriously move on public roads, including the Central Vista under construction now. India has already become the best country to fly away from.

The greatest damage the BJP has caused is to the farmers who cannot get rid of their bovines and have to look after them till they die a natural death. Ambani and Adani do not have this problem as they do not keep cows. Nor do the RSS leaders who are nowadays more busy arranging cash to buy parties and candidates as in Kerala.

We have seen how a failed, third-rate politician, whose only qualification is that he is close to the PM, thought about getting coconut trees painted saffron in Lakshadweep. He thinks that the island’s emancipation is in destroying everything that is Muslim. So, their eating habits, fishing habits and way of life must undergo a change.

Thank goodness, the High Court has stopped the maverick administrator in his tracks. Who knows it might prompt the Centre to bring Lakshadweep within the territorial limits of another state high court like that of Karnataka. Who knows Amit Shah is even capable of declaring the archipelago as part of Gujarat.

On June 24, the whole world saw the Prime Minister virtually admitting that his initiative in Kashmir was a misadventure. For once he realised that Jammu and Kashmir was not just a piece of real estate that could be parcelled out to corporates and rich businessmen. 

Yes, millions of Kashmiris had to suffer for months. Many died for want of medicines while the so-called mainstream media eulogised Modi and Shah for their boldness. For once they realise that statehood will have to be given to J&K sooner than later. So, what did India gain from the misadventure?

The farmers continue to live on the borders of Delhi. The government may not be bothered about them. They have already braved one severe winter and a severe summer. They are for the long haul. The heavens have not fallen since the Supreme Court ordered putting the three controversial agricultural laws on hold.

Why can’t Modi call the farmers, listen to them and take necessary measures so that they can return to their homes? They are not aliens. They are the ones who grow food that we all eat. Modi can afford to import mushroom, eat dhokla made of Quinoa, have an assortment of dried fruits from Afghanistan and enjoy Turkish delights but we cannot. We need our farmers. Their welfare is our welfare.

Alas, Modi does not have any concern for the poor. He thinks that once the corporates grow and there are a larger number of successful businessmen like Amit Shah’s son, there would be the trickle-down effect on the poor. He wants us to wait till, to use a Malayalam adage, hens have breasts and we all can have milk!

ajphilip@gmail.com