Mukesh Ambani fifth richest: Rejoice ?

Newspaper headlines and TV channels were screaming the news: Mukesh Ambani enters World Top-5 richest list. The reports said that Ambani was now the fifth richest man in the world. It needs to be noted that this achievement was achieved even while the country was going through a pandemic and the average Indian was suffering both physical and financial issues.

So is it time to call out the band and sound the trumpet. Let us tarry some and consider the following report filed a few months earlier.   Oxfam reveals that one percent of Indians (this includes Ambani) held 42.5 percent of the country’s national wealth while the bottom 50 percent, the majority of the population ( you and me), a mere 2.8 percent. The Oxfam report says India’s top 10 percent holds 75 percent of the national wealth while the bottom 90 percent holds 25.7 percent.

India added 18 new billionaires last year raising the total to 119, and their wealth crossed the $400 billion (about Rs 2800 crore) mark for the first time. It rose from $325.5 billion in 2017 to $440.1 billion in 2018. The fortunes of Indian billionaires grew by an astronomical 35 percent per day last year, or by Rs 2,200 crore daily, while the poorest 10 percent of the country has continued to remain in debt since 2004.

India’s economic achievements over the years, since economic planning was introduced, can be measured in these terms. It is a story of exploitation of the poor and deprived (the majority) for the benefit of a few. This has been possible because of the obliging rusted steel frame of India, politicians, and governments. The gap between the rich and the poor has increased because of the pro-rich, Make in India, policies of the present and past governments.

Favored businessmen are pampered with liberal land, loans, subsidies, and concessions. With the excuse of promoting economic development, to create more job opportunities, governments have been handing out crore upon crore to friendly and obliging business houses. Non-performing Assets, which in common man’s language, means non returned written off loans by companies have increased over the years because the government favors the favored industrialists.

Industrial activities start with the exploitation of the landowner and continue with the

Courtesy: New Indian Express

exploitation of the workers once the industry is set up and running. Land for the industrial units is acquired by ousting landowning farmers and settled agriculturalists, largely tribals, marginal farmers, and the poor and deprived farmworkers. 

Self-serving bureaucrats, ever willing to please at a price, remove all hurdles, even legal ones, using their official powers to browbeat the landowners to part with their land. In the last wave of industrialization which overtook most of the areas in tribal populated districts, several hundreds of areas of land were handed over to industrial houses. Land belonging to tribal communities was allotted to business pushing the tribals deeper into poverty and deprivation.

India’s industrial growth has been a story of exploitation. The worst sufferers are tribal communities, who suffer a double whammy of both disadvantaged region and ethnicity Indian tribal communities are the worst off in terms of income, health, education, nutrition, infrastructure and governance. They have also been unfortunately at the receiving end of the injustices of the development process itself.

Tribal communities make up a sizeable percentage of India’s total population. Of the total population, tribals make up 8.4 percent of the population. The land occupied by the Tribal communities is rich in hydrologic, mineral, oil, gas, forest, and other resources This makes them attractive sites to locate development projects of various kinds.

Many development projects are presently located in areas densely inhabited by tribal communities. Multinational companies looking for investment opportunities, consider these favored destinations More than one lakh hectares of forest land, almost 11 percent  of the total forest area have been diverted for non-forest use in the three mineral-rich states of Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Around 40 percent of the 60 million people displaced following development projects in India are tribals, which is not a surprise given that 90 percent of our coal and more than 50 percent of most minerals and dam sites are mainly in tribal regions. Clearly, the tribal people have not been included in or given the opportunity to benefit from development.”

This explains the story of eviction and marginalization of the tribal population who bear the brunt of predatory industrialization and mining. The new economic policies of liberalization, privatization, and globalization, have led, in recent years, to a huge drive by the state to transfer resources, particularly land and forests, which are critical for the livelihood and the survival of the tribal people, to corporations for the exploitation of mineral resources, SEZs and other industries, most of which have been enormously destructive to the environment Over the years since independence the country has been witnessing gross violation of the rights of the poor, particularly tribal rights.

While Tribal communities have been the worst hit urban and rural poor likewise suffer. The plight of the small and marginal farmers across the country make frequent headlines largely announcing acts of suicide by farmers. With their stress on the manufacturing and service sectors, the government has virtually ignored the needs of the small and marginal farmer. While several thousand crore are being sacrificed at the altar of industrialization, by way of concessions and subsidies, the farmers, the backbone of any nation, are being starved of finance essential to improve the yields from his land.

For years labor from the eastern states have been migrating to industrially developed states to earn a living. They were responsible for creating wealth for their employers. Their share in the created wealth did not in any way match the labor they provided. They live in shanty conditions denied the basic facilities.

“An estimated 450 million internal migrant workers make up 92 percent of the workforce in India, and no one seems to be looking after these workers. More than 700 million internal migrants globally continue to navigate the risk of working, despite the health crisis.

Migrant laborers in India have long been particularly vulnerable to unfair labor practices. And labor protections often weaken further during crises.

“The recent call to loosen labor laws in UP and Gujarat dangerously sidesteps the minimal protections in place for migrant workers in India. Migrant workers in India were leading a life where exploitation and vulnerability were the norms. The COVID-19 crisis has made their vulnerability more visible to everyone. Lacking strong worker safeguards, migrant labor cannot claim protection from the state. And the state can conveniently forget about these workers.”

Governments are fueling inequality by underfunding public services, such as healthcare and education, on the one hand, while under taxing corporations and the wealthy, and failing to clamp down on tax dodging, on the other. A survey has revealed that "India's combined revenue and capital expenditure of the Centre and state for medical and public health, sanitation and water supply is Rs 2,08,166 crore, less than the wealth of the world’s ninth wealthiest billionaire at Rs 2,80,700 crore."

Governments since independence have promised to work in the service of the people. This promise has remained unfulfilled in large measure. It has today been converted into the service of the rich and the powerful at the expense of the poor and the deprived. India started its journey as an independent nation with overwhelming poverty. The removal of poverty was the first major promise. Judged from any angle this promise has remained unfulfilled.

Economic planning has largely favored a small, very few, to the disadvantage of a very large section of the population. This explains why we have created more billionaires and pushed more people below the poverty line. While millions wallow in grinding poverty and want, the rich and the powerful amass increasing wealth. The government bends over backward to provide additional incentives, including concessions to help the rich grow richer.

Decades of planned economic development have left vast sections of the people, particularly the urban and rural poor, out of the circle of beneficiaries. One of the key trends underlying this huge concentration of wealth and income is the increasing return to capital versus labor. In India, the share of national income going to workers has been declining. Workers are securing less and less of the gains from growth. Owners of capital, like Ambani, have seen their capital consistently grow (through interest payments, dividends, or retained profits) faster than the rate the economy has been growing.

India’s top CEOs make almost 450 times the salary of a typical employee. It is unimaginable that a CEO is as productive as a substantial number of his employees put together. According to the ET Intelligence Group salaries of Indian CEOs were second only to that of CEOs in the United States. The salary gap between the highest and the rest continues to grow The tragedy of Indian planning has been that millions of Indians do not find themselves a part of the growth story. There is growing resentment over this gaping inequality.

Describing the Indian situation as "morally outrageous", Oxfam International Executive Director Winnie Byanyima has said: "It is morally outrageous that a few wealthy individuals are amassing a growing share of India's wealth' while the poor are struggling to eat their next meal or pay for their child's medicine’s.” If this obscene inequality between the top 1 per cent and the rest of India continues then it will lead to a complete collapse of the social and democratic structure of this country.

The Mahatma had said that independence would have meaning only after every tear was wiped from every eye. To celebrate the “achievements” of one percent of the population at the expense of a vast majority would be an insult to the memory of the Father of the Nation.

So should we bring out the band and blow the trumpet for Ambani and the members of the one percent gang or should we clang thalis, blow the shankha and light candles for the sufferings of the poor exploited and deprived There is urgent need to relook at the meaning of reforms to make them pro-poor, rather than pro-corporate. Without this, inequality in India will continue to escalate and create dangerous tensions, threatening the very survival of the delicate fabric of Indian democracy.