Noted economist Prabhat Patnaik chairs the reception committee that organised a rally of workers and peasants in Delhi last week. He is also among the petitioners, including eminent academicians such as Romila Thapar and Satish Deshpande, who moved the Supreme Court challenging the arrest of activists by the Maharashtra police. In an interview with BusinessLine , Patnaik said attacks on the democratic rights of common citizens and the growing authoritarianism are the reason economists and historians feel compelled to step out of the world of academia and join street protests. Excerpts:

Among ideas that emerged at the rally, one was that cooperatives are the alternative to finance capital. Such discussionss on public platforms lead to allegations that the Left is pushing us back to the Licence Raj...

We have to force a change in the nature of the state so as to insulate it from finance capital. But while we work towards that change, we also have to set in place a economic regime to ensure how investments are going to be undertaken, factories built and foreign trade conducted. On those issues, the state and the public sector will have to play a key role. Alongside, the cooperative sector is also crucial, especially in the context of dispossession of the peasantry in the name of industrialisation. If the peasants through cooperatives own industry, that contradiction or conflict disappears. Neoliberal capitalism envisages development and industrialisation at the expense of the peasantry on some future promise of jobs which is almost never realised. Our aim is to ensure that the peasantry is directly a beneficiary of industrialisation and it is possible if the peasantry, collectively or cooperatively, owns industry.

But the cooperatives in India are small and unorganised. How can they fight big corporations?

That is up to us. Cooperatives are small because they are discouraged. If a government considers the corporate sector the main instrument for industrialisation, it has no interest in cooperatives. The idea is to ensure that in the process of development, there is no primitive accumulation of capital.

Where and why do the interests of workers and farmers come together?

The interests of farmers and workers have become congruent. Do not forget that 15 lakh peasants have given up agriculture between 1991 and 2011. Where have they gone? They have gone to cities. So the scale of migration to cities is rising in direct proportion to the destitution of the peasantry. This is because neoliberalism unleashes primitive accumulation of capital.

The workers’ interests are also affected to the extent peasants are dispossessed. That is why the interests have become congruent. The fundamental reason is the squeeze on agriculture. Compare the data of 2013-14 with that of 2017-18. In four years, the per capita income of the agriculture-dependant population deflated by a consumer price index number of the rural sector. In real terms, there is a decline, no increase. This is an essential feature of neoliberalism.

Can a government’s political will address these problems?

Political will is a short form. It is not a matter of subjective desire or consciousness. In India, goals such as overcoming destitution, poverty, and education and healthcare for all, are not unachievable. Why isn’t this being done?The ruling class alliance is against it. The influence of other classes on the state power must increase. Inthe Nehruvian era, the State listened to the workers and peasants. Under neoliberalism, that is gone.

Almost all the banks faced huge losses in the last quarter. Is the sector facing a crisis? ?

I see behind the banking crisis, a deliberate effort on the part of the government to reduce them to such a condition that privatisation would be presented as the only alternative. At least 75 per cent of the NPAs are owed to big capitalists. In the name of infrastructure financing, the government encouraged PSBs to lend indiscriminately. Infrastructure is not an earning proposition. Secondly, the banks did not scrutinise these loans. Thirdly, these loans were diverted for other purposes. They reduced PSBs to great difficulties and then used them as an excuse for privatisation.

Why have you approached the Supreme Court in the activists’ case?

The neoliberal paradigm of development has run out of its course and potential. It has reached a dead end. Therefore capitalism is in a structural crisis.Naturally, fascist forces will come up We have to have a short-term strategy to fight them,which is why everybody is talking about political alliances for 2019 elections. But then it has to be backed by a long-term strategy to change very conjuncture that produces this. Unless we do this, these fascist forces will continue to remain even if they are defeated in 2019.

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