‘If annadata is pushed to commit suicide, where are we heading?’

The Modi government’s policies to attract foreign investment and “humongous” tax concessions to corporates will not work because it will not create productive capacity and there is no purchasing power with the people, said CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury in an interview.

Its policies have given the opportunity to opposition parties to get together because the government has failed to fulfil people’s aspirations, he said. Yechury, who was recently elected CPI(M) general secretary, took on the government on its Make in India slogan and said “the slogan should be Make for India, that is by India and for India”.

“It (policies) cannot work. I will give you the reasons. You are giving concessions to attract more foreign investments. You are also giving concessions to Indian corporates to invest more.

“The logic given by the government, even the Manmohan Singh government earlier, is that greater investments will create new job opportunities and thereby greater economic growth. But there is a serious flaw in this argument — why this can’t work,” he said.

Even if this investment comes in, it would be “meaningful only if it comes into a productive sector and not to loot our resources and expand their profits, without creating productive capacities in India”, Yechury said.

“If they produce goods, these need to be sold. But where will you sell them? There is global stagnation, our exports declined 26 per cent last year. You can’t sell these goods abroad, you can’t sell them in India because the people’s purchasing power is declining as a result of these policies and growing unemployment.

“So greater investment does not create greater growth, unless you economically empower our own people, which can only be done through a very high dose of public investment which has stopped for a long time,” he said.

Opposing the “huge, humungous tax concessions” being given to foreign capital and the corporate houses, the CPI(M) leader said: “We are not asking you to raise the rates, but collect the taxes (from corporates). It is huge, it amounts to ₹5 lakh crore. “Collect these resources and invest them in both social and economic infrastructure, that is health and education and in roads and canals.”

This, Yechury said, will create huge new employment opportunities and the salaries paid to these youths will generate domestic demand, on which Indian manufacturing and industry can thrive, he said.

He quoted National Crime Records Bureau figures to say that one farmer was killing himself every 36th minute.

“In this background of agrarian distress, the Land Bill is being brought. Where are you leading to?

“Your food self-sufficiency, food security is being jeopardised. One kilometre along the national highways will be taken for industrial corridors (under this Bill). That amounts to 39.1 per cent of our entire cultivable land. If you minus your cultivation from this land, where is your food security? If the annadata (food provider) is pushed to commit suicide, where are we heading?”

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