Modinomics is the Harbinger of Total Economic Chaos

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Modinomics is the new school of economics to which the Bhakts, the cheerleaders of Narendra Modi-led Hindutva fascist regime, subscribes to and they hail it as a powerful weapon to get rid of all the woes of the poor and take India to the plane of development that Modi promised during his 2014 election campaign. While the rank of the Bhakts and RSS’ intellectual stormtroopers and logic-slayers are blowing the trumpet of the success of Narendra Modi government’s economic policies, especially the demonetisation exercise and the recent roll-out of the GST regime, the Indian economy entered a catastrophic phase with the most sluggish pace of economic growth since Narendra Modi managed to topple the Congress-led UPA II government by riding high tides of anti-establishment sentiments in 2014. As the economy goes for a toss due to the conspiracies hatched by the Hindutva camp under Narendra Modi-Amit Shah and Mohan Bhagwat to help the corporate giants, foreign and domestic, to consolidate and expand their hegemony in India, the people are constantly told that the Modi government is bringing a wave of development for them, developments that have become some sort of myths for the common people. Denying that there is any crisis in the economy under his misrule, Modi is babbling the same rhetoric of previous governments looting the country and that his regime is undoing the wrongs during his recent campaign-mode tour to Varanasi, while Arun Jaitley is counting the failures of the Modi government as its achievements and Amit Shah is meeting the press to lecture about economics, which is Modinomics, the sheer nonsense peddled as economics in Modi-fied India.

It’s now known to all that the Indian GDP growth dropped to a three-year-low at 5.7 percent in the June quarter of FY 2017-18 from 6.1 percent in the preceding quarter. The contraction of GDP growth, especially its decline to the sub-six zone is a sign that the Indian economy has entered the phase of crisis that several economists warned about, especially after the rolling out of the  demonetisation exercise by Narendra Modi in November last year, which sucked nearly 86 percent of the cash in circulation in the third quarter of FY 2016-17. Even when the economy didn’t recover fully from the shock of demonetisation exercise – done under the pretext of slaying black money hoarded in cash and later the goal post was shifted multiple times until the RBI data showed its total failure due to the return of 99 percent of the cash back to the banking system, the Modi government audaciously dared to implement the GST regime, which though benefitted the big corporations but ruined the small businesses with a lethal shock. But even after all these, at a time when the growth of the manufacturing sector dipped to 1.2 percent from 5.3 percent in the preceding quarter, high taxes were imposed on the petroleum products, unemployment reached a peak and job growth started contracting immensely due to the dual factor of demonetisation shock and GST roll-out, the Bhakts and the BJP leaders showed their courage by propagating falsehood over the economy with absolute impunity. Their Modinomics-backed theoreticians are vehemently attacking those who dare to call the Modi government a disaster for India.  

Amit Shah’s blame on “technical problem” for the decline in GDP growth rate and his claim of Modi government’s 7.5 crore employment generation through Mudra scheme that gives, on an average, loan of ₹17,000 to ₹25,000 to the youth, are now old-school jokes. In the social-media joke corners, the call by the Bhakt brigade to support the fuel price hike through excessive taxing as it “penalises the rich,” is the new arrival. Articles on the RSS’ unofficial mouthpiece like Swarajya Magazine by notorious hatemonger writers are now lacking any suitable economic logic to defend the Modi government, so they are resorting to the propaganda that high amount of taxes on petroleum products will actually be an antidote to “Jihadi Islamist” movement funded by petro-dollar of the Saudi monarchy and other Gulf monarchies that export Salafism throughout the world. The pot-smoking writer of such articles don’t get it straight that if it comes to Salafist propaganda, Narendra Modi himself got the Order of Saudi Arabia, OSA, which is the highest civilian award given by the notorious Saud monarchy, one of the trusted lackey of the US in Middle-East Asia and the fountainhead of Salafist terrorism, to those who serve some interests of its kingdom. Can they justify Modi’s eagerness to wear the badge of honour offered by the Saudi monarchy? Or his endless flirtation with other monarchs of the region who are complicit in exporting Salafist militancy throughout the world? Isn’t this a proof that Hindutva fascism and Salafist militants are hand-in-glove in a heinous conspiracy hatched against the people of the Indian subcontinent? The hired writers of the RSS will deny answering them. Modinomics doesn’t answer, it claims and even when its claims are rubbish and worthless, it still magnifies them to make them appear worthy.

Well, the RSS propaganda masters will cite several “benefits” of why the common people should pay higher oil prices, the high oil prices can be “good” for carbon emission penalty and also good economics as it “reduces subsidy burden” on the government. But they will not speak a line on why the government doesn’t dare to impose higher taxes on petrol cars and why Narendra Modi, while appeasing the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, allowed Suzuki motor corp to grab land in his home-state Gujarat to open a new car manufacturing unit at a time when the government is, purportedly, as claimed by such RSS-affiliated toady writers, hell-bent in reducing carbon fuel emission in India? The bogus logic of helping the government to develop infrastructure by collecting huge surplus by taxing petroleum products again falls on its face and creates a facepalm moment for the RSS toadies. Why would the people, who according the government’s claims are paying more tax than ever, should pay more to that very government that was formed with the slogan of “minimum government and maximum governance” and with the promise of ending the reign of fuel-terror unleashed by Manmohan Singh’s government, which was criticised incessantly by the BJP for imposing a huge burden of high fuel prices on the common people?

When Modi took over the reins of the country in May 2014, the fuel prices started hitting all-time low and rather than passing the benefits to the people of the country, the consumers of petrol and diesel, the majority of whom are common people and are since reeling under huge burden of fuel prices and surcharges, his government kept increasing the taxes on the petroleum products and increased it nine times in these three years. Since 16 June 2017, the Modi government has started increasing price of petroleum products almost daily; the increase reportedly varied from 1.00 paise per litre to 15 paise a litre during this period. Over the last three months, petrol price increased by ₹7.00 in Delhi and ₹5.24 in Mumbai, while diesel price increased by ₹5.50 in Delhi and ₹3.90 in Mumbai, and all these before the latest hike in taxes, which made the petrol price reach ₹79.54 on 15 September 2017 in Mumbai, a three-year high. The Bhakts are claiming that the petrol users are rich and can pay the extra amount, which, even if we accept by deducting the crores of motorcycle and scooter-riding middle and lower-middle class people of India, still leaves the question of diesel price hike a mystery, when it’s directly linked to inflation and is linked closely with agriculture, crop transport and so many other activities that are related to the common people.  

In Delhi itself, the taxes on diesel are nearly ₹28.52, which makes the ₹30.29 per litre diesel available to the retail consumers at nearly double the pre-tax price. The overburden of fuel taxes imposed by the Modi government, which is higher than the amount of tax levied on petroleum products by any country in the entire Indian sub-continent, has fuelled economic crisis through the inflation route while it has helped the ruling clique, the Modi government to earn nearly ₹12.8 lakh crore in the last three years. This massive amount is invested by the government as stimuli to the big corporate houses and in waiving-off the bad debts of the big corporate fraudsters, who regularly pay donations to the RSS and the BJP. This amount is not used to generate income as the government, run by Modinomics, claims that it’s here for minimum governance with a maximum government by imposing immense tax burden on the people, while providing jobs to the unemployed or creating employment opportunities to allow the millions entering the job market daily to earn their livelihood is no more a government’s responsibility. It’s similar to the declaration by Yogi Adityanath- the death of the children in government hospitals is not the responsibility of the government. The rule of the offspring of the cow and its vigilante is surely steering the country to greater heights of catastrophe with their unique skills.

Though the protagonist of the regime, Narendra Modi, his Man-Friday Amit Shah, Arun Jaitley and others may try to carry out their mission of being the militant proselytiser of Hindutva and Modinomics, but they are surely failing to dodge the flames ignited by the huge discontent that is stirring its once-upon-a-time strong base, the small and medium Hindu traders, who have been stringent Hindutva followers for years. As the GST regime is ruining the fortune of the small traders and hurting the medium ones too in the hub of manufacturing like Gujarat and Maharashtra. The discontent is high in the stronghold of the BJP in Surat, where the small and middle traders are threatened with a total ouster by the pro-corporate GST and they are fuming against the Modinomics hailing BJP’s leaders whom they have fed and donated a huge amount of money even a few months back.

This is the condition prevailing among the small and mid-sized traders of the entire country and without addressing the chaos created by GST that is throwing the small fishes out of the pond for the sake of the big ones, Arun Jaitley is patting his own back and scratching the back of Narendra Modi for the demonetisation drive and denying that there is anything wrong in the economy. Making his banal remarks on the “objectives of demonetisation” he again tried to shift the goal post of demonetisation exercise, once more, by saying that “the idea is to make sure that this anonymous cash operating in the system itself becomes a part of the system,” referring to another newly discovered reason by the BJP leadership to shield itself from scathing attacks from opposition quarters over the failure of demonetisation exercise. Arun Jaitley has taken over the mission of helping the big corporate houses to banish small and middle traders from different marketplaces to ensure that the foreign monopoly and finance capital-owned big corporations can monopolise its grip on the Indian market and ruin the remnants of Indian small trades and commerce, including the retail, FMCG, textile and hardware industries. Rather than taking concrete steps to resolve the problems that the manufacturing sector, the small and middle traders are facing, rather than taking steps to resolve the growing unemployment issue and the crisis in agriculture and rural economy, Arun Jaitley, being a truly loquacious bluffmaster like his boss Narendra Modi, keeps assuring that the problems will be resolved with the money that the government will further earn by disinvestment in the PSUs, which will again allow the corporate houses to exploit profit out of the enterprises that were set-up with the money collected from the tax paid by the common people of the country, directly and indirectly, and it will also throw the working class of the organised PSU into financial chaos and snatch their hard-won rights from them, including the right to organise themselves under the banner of trade unions.

Modinomics is no answer to the extreme problems that are haunting the Indian economy at the moment and driving the people to an utmost crisis because the proponents and advocates of Modinomics are not here to resolve the problems of the economy but to intensify them in the interest of the big corporate houses. There cannot be any way out within the system’s framework for the Indian economy, now quagmire in grave crisis. It’s a part and parcel of the international bandwagon of finance and monopoly capital controlled from the high-rises in Wall Street of New York and it’s from there that the crisis of the US-led international finance and monopoly capital seeks rescue from the crisis gripping it by imposing that very burden over the people of India. Modinomics is the theory of the collaborators of foreign corporations and domestic comprador and crony capitalists, who are helping the duo to get rid of their crisis by plundering the natural and mineral resources, labour power and the huge market of India. This plunder of the country and the disruption of its economy, fuelling unemployment, starvation and death cannot go on unopposed and unresisted for a long time and it’s through the intensification of the heroic struggles, like those of the farmers of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab, the struggle of the working class for their just demands and against the corporate loot and plunder promoted by the Modi government, will be able to take India to its freedom from the chaos unleashed by Modinomics and the Hindutva fascist hate-monger-turned-quack-economists.