"With the lifting of lockdowns, the crowds and chaos are back," wrote Shashi Shekhar. "Migrant workers eager to return to work are frustrated by the long waiting lists for trains," Mint. "Ideas of reducing economic inequality and creating parity have also proved to be hollow," " in a country where 63 families have more assets than its annual budget, and where the total wealth of only nine people is equal to that of half the country's population." Shekhar blames capitalism. "What did the system of capitalism, for which ballads were sung after collapse of the Soviet Union, give us in the past three decades?" The Soviet Union collapsed because its economy could not cope with an arms race with the US, a capitalist country, and a falling price of oil, History.com. "Once among the crisis-prone emerging nations, Russia is now one of the most -- perhaps the most -- conservative and stable," wrote Ruchir Sharma. "It entered the pandemic with the lowest government debt among the 20 largest emerging economies, just 14% of GDP." "For the first time in modern history, Russia had the ammunition to counter a crisis by both raising government spending and easing interest rates," Times of India, TOI. India, on the other hand, is a "Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic" according to our Constitution, wikipedia. Which means that successive governments have brought in numerous subsidies to help the poor, wikipedia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has added 26 new schemes to the list, India Today. Why then "In India, those who spend more than Rs 32 per day are not counted as people living below the poverty line. In the US, those who spend less than $14 (about Rs 1000) a day are considered poor?" Doesn't that prove the superiority of capitalism, as an economic system, over socialism or communism? "Corruption, cronyism, nepotism, investment and divestment based on patronage and not profit," wrote Matt Kilcoyne. "These are what kept India down." "Obsessed with keeping a lid on borrowing costs, the government is making things worse for the common man by its regressive consumption taxes, including on petrol and life-saving Covid-19 drugs and by a very high dependence on cheap money from the central bank," wrote Andy Mukherjee. The reason for high taxes is that, "The public debt is around 90% of GDP while the consolidated public sector fiscal deficit reached 12.1% in 2020-21," wrote Prof Amartya Lahiri. The government should stimulate economic recovery by vaccinating everyone for free, an employment scheme for the urban poor on the lines of MGNREGA, which helped a record 37 million people in rural areas in April, Financial Express, and by reducing goods and services tax (GST) rates on consumer durables, Economic Times (ET). Petrol prices have been rising inexorably, reaching new record levels, goodreturns. "For an Indian earning the average national wage, a litre of petrol would take up a quarter of their daily income, according to Reuters news agency calculations," Al Jazeera. This is hurting the army of men delivering goods for e-commerce companies like Amazon, Flipkart and Zomato. "Wholesale price inflation (WPI) climbed to 12.94% in May" "on the back of rise in prices of crude petroleum, mineral oils viz petrol, diesel, naphtha, furnace oil etc and manufactured products as compared to the corresponding month of the previous year," ET. "Retail inflation accelerated to a six-month high of 6.3 percent in May", Business Standard. This is despite a high rate of 6.27% in May last year, so the base effect has kept it lower. So, people are earning less and having to pay higher prices, increasing poverty. "Union minister of petroleum and natural gas Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday said that while the current high fuel prices were problematic for consumers, the government was saving money to spend on welfare schemes," TOI. In other words, increasing poverty to help the poor. Not a problem of capitalism. It is Indianism.
No comments:
Post a Comment