India’s labour question is also a social question: inequalizing growth and increasing social equality under neoliberal economic regimes

Abstract

The Indian growth story since its adoption of neoliberal economic reforms in 1991 is indeed a celebrated one especially by the increasingly powerful corporate capitalist lobby and their supporters within India as well as abroad. In fact the high growth performance started from the mid-eighties with limited internal economic reforms has now contributed to a long-term growth rate of 6% per annum for the last three decades. Although this record is excelled by China by a considerable margin over a longer period that in no way diminishes its contemporary significance. What is conspicuous by its absence is any reference to the increasing economic inequality embedded in a pre-existing social inequality and the consequent impact on the vast majority of the people referred to as aam aadmi, or common people, in India. One of the main justifications propounded, and pounded relentlessly, by the official statements and pronouncements as well as by large sections of the powerful media is that the process of high growth and its maintenance will ‘trickle down’ and reduce poverty because it will lift ‘all boats’. Of course, growth did trickle down for some in the literal sense of lifting them out of an officially defined poverty line that has increasingly been challenged while leaving a large majority where they were. Such a process has been called ‘inclusive growth’ because it sought to give them some marginal benefits without any reference to the level or the rate of increase in economic benefits accruing to the non-poor and richer sections.