It is an irony of sorts when PM Modi often keeps addressing his captive audience that his government is for the poor and needy while his FM Shri Arun Jaitly indulges in promoting anti poor financial policies. He has famously questioned the relevance of higher interest rates on savings which has been there for pretty long time nurturing the very poor of the country by augmenting their megre monthly income allowing them to sustain with dignity while the present BJP government has propelled all their financial policies towards crony capitalism.
Let us begin with the great BJP fiasco of revoking its very recent policy of prohibiting the crores of poor private sector employees to withdraw their PF amounts which included the employer contribution. This facility has withstood the test of time by providing succor to poor families in times of their dire necessities. The finance minister, rather than concentrating on many cheating industry leaders, who are not regularly depositing the PF contributions in to the FUND, to ensure compliance, did attack the very poor in the name of good governance and better fiscal administration, which is nothing but a travesty of justice at best. Mercifully the decision was revoked and statuesque ante was restored after robust protests by the affected poor employees.
The FM is totally silent and has come up with neither an action plan whatsoever with regard to the companies, who have failed to deposit their share of PF contribution in to the fund, nor named such defaulters. It is pertinent to ask the government to ensure action is initiated to recover the dues from erring companies along with interest. It is also important to check companies who are repeatedly cheating the employees of their PF contributions by keeping the basic pay below the recommended scales by the labor department.
It is duty of the government to protect the poor from being victimized by the companies as regards their legitimate PF dues is concerned. The FM will be well advised to ensure that huge NPAs which are a national burden and a big financial drain for development are recovered with gusto rather than heaping miseries on the poor working class. The country wants to know how a big defaulter like Mallya is allowed to abscond while a poor farmer commits suicide for failure to pay paltry amounts due to pressure from financial institutions. Mallya not only defaulted on huge loans to the tune of 7000 crores but also failed to pay his employees for months’, did not deposit the Income Tax amounts collected from his own employees and failed to pay service tax up to hundreds of crores.
The FM should channelize his energies to such serious issues rather than making life miserable for the poor working class of India. There are more MALLAYAs to be unearthed on war footing by the govt to bring the ailing financial system of the country back to health. An audit of all Financial Institutions both public and private including RBI is the need of the hour and not sloganeering. It is not out of place to suggest that the wealth of CMDs of all such institutions in the last decade or so are scrutinized on priority to unearth hoe such huge NPAs are allowed to accumulate and bring guilty to book.
I am sure with such positive actions our GDP will surely show an upward surge in a realistic manner rather than the present manufactured GDP by the FM, as also rightly pointed out by many financial wizards all over the world including US of A.
BJP should realize that its honeymoon period is over. They are in the government for the last 26 months. Blaming period is also over. It is time they started functioning like a government rather than an opposition party involved in blame game. Mr Modi’s government has utterly failed both in delivering their promise of getting the black money in to the coffers of common man and addressing the issue of arresting generation of black money. Except for the “old wine in new bottle” principle of VDS of previous government nothing substantial has been done yet by Mr Modi and his government. It is high time they start working rather than indulging in self praise of development programs in flowery words that are never quantified and substantiated.
The countrymen would be certainly proud of the realistic achievements of the BJP government if they can speak with facts and figures rather than mere words which carry no meaning, since the ground situation in most of the sectors which add up to the GDP growth are not very healthy. A mere search for such statistics will prove the point. I do hope the age old adage of “Sone ki Chidiya” in respect of India will be a reality in the near future and expect the present dispensation to work towards achieving the same’
I love my India
Jai Hind