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Mainstream, Vol 63 No 5,February 1, 2025
Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, Feb 1, 2025
Saturday 1 February 2025
#socialtagsLetter to the Readers of Mainstream
India’s Union Budget for 2025 is currently under presentation and discussion. The budget shows Modi’s Govt’s Pavlovian pro-corporate refrain on ‘ease of doing business’ while unemployment levels remain high and wages stagnate. The flagship national rural employment programme NREGA employs over 130 million people for at least a hundred days in a year remains underfunded with an allocation of Rs 86,000 crore for fiscal year 2024-25, [1]] does not get an upgraded profile that it should as suggested by a Parliamentary Standing Committee Dec 2024 [2], [3] The latest economic survey report shows that real monthly wages for salaried and self-employed workers in 2023-24 were lower than pre-pandemic levels in 2017-18. [4]. The three-term Modi Government is confidently pushing its agenda —in November 2024, months before making public the budget the government released the Draft “National Policy Framework on Agricultural Marketing (NPFAM)” which seeks to re-introduce the pro-corporate provisions from the three controversial Farm Laws that it withdrew under pressure after a prolonged struggle of peasantry in 2020-21. The peasant organisations are mobilising to contest the new policy. [5]. Similarly the Government has set the roll out of National Labour codes which have been highly contested by the labour movement in the country [6] In the past years there have been repeated protests by unemployed youth and there is an urgent need to create jobs to counter unemployment [7], [8], [9]. The opposition ruled states should take the lead by example and develop pilot programmes for imaginative urban employment guarantee schemes that train and employ people in environmental and socially useful services in coordination with trade unions & social movements. It is time for the labour and peasant movements to configure new mobilisation strategies and that encompass mobilisation of NREGA workers and the unemployed youth and careful coordination with opposition parties to support their demands
February 1, 2025 —HK
[1] https://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/election2024-rural-jobs-programme-remains-underfunded-despite-high-demand-905310
[2] https://sansad.in/getFile/lsscommittee/Rural%20Development%20and%20Panchayati%20Raj/18_Rural_Development_and_Panchayati_Raj_4.pdf?source=loksabhadocs#page=12
[3] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/union-budget-2025-mgnrega-wages-must-be-increased-to-400-per-day-says-jairam-ramesh/article69145880.ece
[4] https://indianexpress.com/article/business/budget/wages-still-below-pre-pandemic-level-while-corporate-profits-soared-to-15-year-high-in-fy24-9810581/
[5] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/farmers-body-to-step-up-protests-against-draft-agri-marketing-policy/article69137302.ece
[6] https://www.moneycontrol.com/europe/?url=https://www.moneycontrol.com/budget/budget-2025-labour-codes-to-be-mandatory-for-large-firms-from-fy26-budget-to-reveal-phased-rollout-plan-says-report-article-12917674.html