Strike political move against Indian govt.: Analyst
Press TV has interviewed Ramtanu Maitra, an Asia desk editor of the Executive Intelligence Review from Leesburg, about the Indian trade unions’ strike over economic reforms.
The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Please explain for us and our viewers the repercussions of the strike of the trade unions who are organizing in India.
Maitra: Well, I think that repercussions we can only see later as of now there are a lot of, you mentioned that, banks were closed but it's only the public sector banks, private banks are all open and they're functioning as before. The strike is in my book there are 12 charter demands that the trade union had made. I think the Modi government had agreed to seven of them, five of them they cannot.
So, nonetheless the point is that some of the dementia justified in the sense that to ban speculative trading commodities, universalization of public distribution, curbing the price hikes and improving the employment opportunities. And these are all cannot be done in one go and moreover under question of privatization of foreign investment in railways, insurance and defense.
It's not that they'll be taking nowhere but there will be getting a chunk of the contracts that will be coming in. And these are all necessary for the economic growth. The point is that how the benefit of this goods is being distributed to the people who are working for it and the rest of the population. Not just trade union in this whole strike is of course international trade union congress and it will go back and look at the Manmohan Singh period during 2004-9 and then 2009 to 2014 they had only generated about 10 million or 12 million jobs when the country needed almost a million jobs a month.
So, in my book it is a political move that has been made in view of the upcoming election that is coming up in UP [Uttar Pradesh], which is the largest state in India. And definitely there is no question that there are many things that the Modi government should do better but to go for a strike on the basis of these demands is to show your strength, your muscle, that you still exist because in reality neither the Left nor the Congress Party has any real strength in the Indian Parliament any longer.
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