'...Travelling hundreds of kilometres to different corners of Bihar this election, I met many voters expressing disenchantment with the Modi government. Referendum is a strong word, but voters were clear in judging the BJP’s campaign with its performance so far at the centre. Voters complained, most of all, of food inflation. Thanks to falling oil prices, overall inflation has been under control since Modi became India’s prime minister. But rising prices of certain food products have pushed the retail inflation higher in the last few months.
'From inflation to social sector spending to reforms, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech at the Delhi Economic Conclave has proved that Truth is dead... Truth would have also gone on to point to the soaring prices of pulses (with arhar dal selling at an unprecedented Rs. 200 a kg). Imagine that? Truth would have also dared to talk about what an ASSOCHAM report said (the report said that prices of brinjal, onions, cucumbers and tomatoes have become much costlier, while the prices of fruits have increased by 40-45 per cent).
New Delhi, 2 March 2015: The Union Budget of 2015-16, the BJP government’s first full budget, has a sense of triumphalism that it ‘can fly’ because it believes that , the ‘opportunity for this exist because we (the BJP government) have created it’ over the last nine-and-a-half months. This government is taking credit for conditions and circumstances that it has nothing to do with or did not, in the remotest way, have the ability or opportunity to contribute to.
"Union Minister of Rural Development Nitin Gadkari has proposed that the MGNREGS be restricted to only tribal and poor areas and the permissible labour to material ratio of expenses be changed from the current 60:40 to 51:49. While the first proposal is being opposed by political parties, who think it will dilute the scheme’s universal employment guarantee, there has been less discussion on the second proposal even though its rationale is not matched by evidence.
Several people’s organizations — the Pension Parishad, the Right to Food Campaign, and the Rashtriya Mazdoor Adhikar Morcha, the Jal Swasthya Abhiyan and the National Alliance for People’s Movements — have come together to hold a public hearing on issues affecting the poor and the marginalized against the backdrop of their belief that neoliberal onslaught under the new government in Delhi has intensified, and there is a growing trend towards privatization and weakening of public services.
'The Right to Food Campaign is flummoxed with the resounding silence of the Finance Minister on the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, in his Budget Speech for 2014-2015 presented in the Lok Sabha on 10th July, 2014. This is in sharp contrast to the BJP’s pre-election manifesto, which clearly committed, “BJP has always held that ‘universal food security’ is integral to national security. BJP will take steps to ensure that the benefits of the scheme reach the common man and that the right to food does not remain an act on paper or a political rhetoric.”
"The Provident Fund Office has allowed companies to cap their per-month PF contribution to employees at Rs. 6,500. At present, companies contribute an amount equal to at least 12 per cent of an employee’s basic salary towards his/her PF. Now if a company chooses it need not provide more than Rs. 6,500, the overall benefits of some salaried employees could be hit by the new circular..."
"In a 2011 paper, Labour and Employment under Globalisation, The Case of Gujarat, Indira Hirway and Neha Shah observe that there is a small modern sector (such as the refineries and petrochemicals plants put up by Reliance and Essar) enjoying “highly capital-intensive technology and high incomes and a large traditional sector with low skills, low productivity and low incomes” though this has the highest employment potential, it has been neglected by Mr Modi because of a policy of pushing for fast GDP growth.
