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[1] From: Sukla Sen <suklasen@yahoo.com> Date: Thu Feb 9, 2006 Subject: The Struggle Against Airport Privatisation and its Implications The Struggle Against Airport Privatisation and its Implications Sushovan Dhar The recently ended four-day strike by The International Airports Authority of India (IAAI) employees evoked a lot of aggressive reaction and diatribe against the workers participating in it by the media and the other protagonists of the neo-liberal economic consensus. The strike which saw the participation of more than 20,000 airport employees was able to partially cripple the flight operations in the country with varied effects in different parts. It was called off on Saturday, February 3rd following a written assurance by the Government that there would be no job loss due to modernization and the privatization of the Delhi and Mumbai airports and also there would also be no victimization of those who participated in the strike. The strike was called in protest against the Government of India??™s decision to allow private ownership in two of the biggest airports of India in the name of modernisation: New Delhi and Mumbai. The issue assumed controversial proportion with the Government??™s decision to modernise the airports through private agencies and hand them over controlling stakes on a revenue sharing basis. IAAI was bypassed on the whole issue and contracts were awarded to private parties on the basis of biddings. In this context it is important to note that until the formation of the International Airport Authority of India in 1972, all civil airports in India (except the princely states before independence) were built and maintained by the Central Public Works Department. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, CPWD engineers carried out the upgradation of the four metro airports on their own, much to the astonishment of experts of the International Civil Aviation Organisation. After the formation of the IAAI, its engineering wing developed enough expertise to stand up to any international competition. However, in the modernisation of the New Delhi & Mumbai airports IAAI has been completely bypassed and the Rs. 5,200 crore (1.16 billion US$) contract has been awarded to two companies Hyderabad-based GMR, in association with Frankfurt-based Fraport AG for modernising Delhi airport and ,GVK, along with South Africa Airport for modernizing Mumbai airport. It is important to note the fact that these parties will not merely carry on the work of modernisation as third party contractors rather they would be investing in the project and would recover the money by having controlling stakes of the airport once the project is completed. The employees of IAAI backed by the left parties opposed the moves of the government leading to the strike. The opposition is on two grounds. First, the modernised airports will see a reduction of 40% of the existing workforce. The employees fear losing their jobs in an environment where unemployment is on the rise, and the state which had earlier limited roles in providing employment and social securities through jobs in the Government and Public-Sector is rapidly shaking off this responsibility. Though the government, in order to persuade the employees to consider off the strike assured that there will be no loss of jobs, various people including political parties call it mere lip service and pointed out the inability of the government to fulfil its commitment as the consortia involved in the modernisation process reiterates that they would not need more than 60% of the workforce once the project is completed and upgradation of the existing system done, and nevertheless, the controlling stakes of the airports would then be in their hands rather than the government. So the question is not merely of the unfortunate 40% who would lose their jobs, these jobs would be sealed forever in a context where unemployment is a serious menace to the society. It is also noteworthy that the productivity of labour would increase considerably (as the consortia estimates a much higher rate of profit, with a lower workforce) and with real wages staying in their current levels the rate of surplus-value extraction will be higher on a phenomenal scale. Since, the profits will be pocketed by the consortia there is no chance however of this amount being channelized for any social priority. Secondly, the trade union and left party opposition is against the handing over of existing profit making non-private sector infrastructure to private corporations. They say that if the government can build roads and bridges there is no rhyme or reason about its inability to build airports. IAAI employees state that they have been demanding the modernisation of airports for the country in the last eight years and their Joint Forum even had submitted a plan to the government. They question the reasons for not allowing the Airport Authority of India to bid for airport modernization and also feel that if allowed, IAAI can build much better and more transparent world-class airports than private companies. The privatization is not a necessity as getting the modernisation done through some private parties (as third party contractors), which would have been the case, does not necessarily mean privatisation of the airports themselves The moves by the government raises a lot of suspicion as it contains a lot of indicators to suggest that this privatization is not a singular act and it will open the floodgates for the future which will not only witness the privatization of the next two major airports: Kolkata & Chennai but will also make IAAI redundant and dismantle it, as Mumbai and Delhi airports are the biggest profit-making airports in the country and much of IAAI??™s activities centre around it and these also contributes to significant revenue to the organisation. The move will also have larger implications and flags-off a new age as it will be followed with the privatization of existing ports, roads, bridges and private capital will be allowed to take over virtually all sectors of the service providing infrastructure thereby practically dismantling the state and public sector. This process(privatisation) has been gaining ground since the late 80s, ever since the international financial institutions, namely the IMF, World Bank, and the GATT (subsequently the WTO), along with the US Treasury department, have been promoting a vicious ???free market ??? policy. Privatisation of all state sector economically viable units, along with destroying the fiscal power of the state and the promotion of the interests of multinational corporations is key to the policy. There are stages in this process. First comes a structural adjustment programme. It constitutes a means for taking over the real assets of indebted countries through the privatisation programme as well as collecting debt-servicing obligations. The privatisation of state enterprises is invariably tied to the renegotiation of the country??™s external debt. The global institutions step in and demand budgetary austerity, devaluation, trade liberalisation and privatisation. This identical recipe has been applied across the world in over 100 countries, and the result, globally, has been disastrous. Debtor countries forego sovereignty in many ways, they lose control over fiscal and monetary policies, the Central Bank is reorganised, the Ministry of Finance becomes de facto independent of democratic institutions and tied to the global agencies, state institutions are deliberately made to collapse, and a parallel government bypassing civil society is created. Countries that do not conform to the performance targets of the IMF and the major private banking institutions like Citicorp are blacklisted. While adopted in the name of democracy and good governance the IMF imposed structural adjustment and liberalisation policies require the strengthening of internal security and the constant upgradation of political repression. Good governance and multi-party elections are parts of the IMF window dressing. Yet the hijacking of the economic agenda makes a mockery of that election. The possibility of building the national economy is denied and destroyed. The European language media of the country concerned, as in India, are simply purchased by global capital, so that among the educated elite (to start with) voices of dissent are totally shut out. The internationalization of macro-economic policy transforms countries into open fields and national economies into reserves of cheap labour. The key to this is debt management. Countries are not able to pay off their debt. Through ???financial engineering??? and the careful art of debt rescheduling, repayment of the principal is deferred while interest payments are enforced, bankruptcy is averted by ???new??? loans that just enable them to pay off the interest (not the principal) arrears on the old loans, and so on. Rescheduling is done only when the debtor country agrees to the policy conditionalities attached to the loan agreements. The central objective is to allow multinational capital resulting from vast accumulations during the expansive phases of the economy and which had been increasingly lying idle to get into sectors which had been hitherto been outside its purview. One area where profits are totally ripped off is in infrastructure building. It is the IMF that decides which infrastructure is worth building and who will build it. The handing over of infrastructural development to private foreign companies involves only a transfer of the wealth of the South. They do the actual work through sub contractors of the country concerned. It is in this framework that the struggle against the privatisation of Indian airports needs to be viewed. Of course, the airports are a classic case of natural monopoly, given the dimensions that govern the business. The capital cost of building an airport is very high. Unless airport operators can be guaranteed that traffic will be stable over a long-time horizon, it would not be possible for them to undertake the massive investments that are necessary for building airports. The fact that airports need a substantial area of land in large and heavily urbanised locations not only for building runways, aprons and other such facilities, but also because they are required to maintain large tracts of open spaces, imposes heavy costs on an airport project. Such investments ensure that the barriers to entry for a new airport operator remain high. And it is for this reason that governments have traditionally maintained and run airports across the world. Very few cities in the world would have the traffic that would warrant the construction of two or more airports. This means there is little scope for competition among airports because the barriers to entry are high. It is in the light of the above observations, the governments attempt to portray ???privatization??? as a means to ensure free-market competition appears as a deception. Proponents of the privatisation move in India have argued that the IAAI's assets will not be sold to the private partner, and that the facilities are only going to be leased on a 30-year term. However, they conceal the fact that the prospective leaseholders are poised to acquire the power to make monopoly profits The rationale of privatising the two airports, which were generating 65 per cent of the IAAI revenue, raises serious questions. The IAAI had the wherewithal for modernisation of the airports and could anytime raise funds from commercial banks or markets, as did private players, to meet any shortfall. All that was needed was proper autonomy to help the IAAI unleash its potential. The IAAI employees who went for the strike and were much abused by the media for such acts and portrayed as elements opposed to modernisation were in fact demanding the modernisation of the airports for the last eight years. One event that stood out like a sore thumb was the apology tendered to a meeting of Indian industrialists by CPI(M) leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee for the agitation. This, as well as related events, placed side by side with CITU and CPI(M) leader M.K. Pandhe??™s strong criticism of the Central Government, indicates a sharp conflict in the CPI(M) between those who want to retain a left wing social democratic orientation and those who have an openly Blairite, pro-imperialist orientation. The struggle itself did not succeed fully. But it showed that workers are waking up from the mythical anti-fascist line into which they have been led ever since the Babri Masjid destruction and the arguments about soft-pedalling agitations against ???secular??? right wing bourgeois governments. But the divisions within the mainstream left makes it difficult to organise a counter campaign by alternative media and propaganda channels, explaining that it is not only the responsibility of the IAAI employees to protest and oppose the project; everyone must feel concerned and rise up on this issue as the effects and implications of this move will be disastrous on their lives; trade-unions, political parties, civil society organisations and every other section of the populace must join hands to thwart these attempts; the struggle is too important to lose. Sushovan Dhar c/o Combat Law, 4th floor, CVOD Jain School, 84, Samuel Street, Dongri, Mumbai - 400 009. Call:(022) 5605 8908 ------------------ [2] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Thu Feb 9, 2006 Subject: Looking Back On 55 Years Of The Republic Day Jyoti Basu Looking Back On 55 Years Of The Republic Day Jyoti Basu THE Republic Day 26 January is replete with historic significance. It marked the adoption of the Constitution of India. The Constitution declared that India would be a democratic republic. The Constitution has been modelled on the Constitutions in force in several countries abroad including Great Britain, USA, and USSR as well as Switzerland. The crux of the Constitution is the set of principles known as the directive principles of state policy. These principles include: adequate means of livelihood for every citizen and the right to work; an economic system which does not result in the concentration of wealth; right to education and provision for free and compulsory education for children; living wage for workers and equal work for equal pay for men and women. As our Party Programme points out, none of these principles could be implemented thanks to the class-bias of the bourgeois-landlord system that has prevailed in the country. The gap between the pious intentions and the actuality of practice, stares us in the face, 55 years since the adoption of the Constitution. The period since independence has been marked by a continuing crisis in the nation??™s economy. India is principally an agrarian country with a superstructure of industries. After we gained freedom from British colonial rule, the Indian ruling classes refuse to go in for land reforms. Concentration of land and rural inequalities continue unabated. A central legislation on minimum wages in the rural stretches is yet a far cry. The policy of liberalisation and the imperialism-driven globalisation have opened up the economy to the marauding forays of multi-national corporations. The bureaucracy, the education system, the media, and the realm of culture are now subject to the penetration of finance capital. The advent of the BJP government at the centre and in some states, saw the beginning of a new form of anti-people oppression when religious fundamentalism was patronised officially. Already there was a concerted attempt by the bourgeoisie and the landlords to distort secular values as enshrined in the Indian Constitution. The Congress is not a communal party but it does make compromises with religious fundamentalism. The BJP and its ideological patron the RSS have been engaged in the onerous task of communalising instruments of the state including the administration, the education system and the media. Communal riots became a frequent feature. While we defend the religious freedom of every religious community, we stand firm against the intrusion of religion into the realms of the economy, education, polity, and administration. Caste oppression, and oppression on the tribal people (the Kalinganagar incident is the most recent example) has been allowed to continue. CENTRE-STATE RELATIONS The Indian Constitution is a federal instrument. However, right from its inception, the Indian ruling classes have been engaged in ensuring that a unitary structure is allowed to overwhelm the political scenario. This is evident in the realm of centre-state relations in particular. On our India-wide campaign and movement for correct centre-state relations, the H S Sarkaria Commission was set up by Mrs Indira Gandhi. Its recommendations were not fully satisfactory, but even so its views with regard to financial relations have not been implemented. The Union list is bigger and exudes much more power than the concurrent list and the State list put together. Over the years, the power and the prestige of the states have been allowed to get eroded. Such has been the bias of the succession of union government that the states have suffered grievously because of lack of administrative and financial powers. In the present capitalist set up, Left Front governance in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, with limited powers, has been travelling along the path of alternative governance. In West Bengal, the Left Front government has been in office for six consecutive times. During this period, the succession of Congress-run and BJP-led union governments have been riding roughshod over the state??™s rights, administrative and financial. We had formulated the case for providing more power to the states in the document of the Srinagar conference quite a few years ago. Discrimination against the Left Front government had been manifest in the freight equalisation policy and the licensing system. Planning also favoured a few states and West Bengal was deliberately ignored, allowing the state to lose its leading position in the sphere of industrial production and expansion. Under the freight equalisation policy, while the comparative advantage of the location of raw materials like coal and iron-ore in West Bengal was effectively nullified, there was no freight equalisation for the raw materials we needed. Under the licence-permit raj, the Congress governments would tell potential investors that industrial licence would only be issued if they chose to invest in states other than West Bengal. An example of this frame of mind has been the Haldia Petro Chemical project. We had to wait for 11 years because of lack of cooperation of the union government, although we had repeatedly approached the union government for clearance of the project, clearance which was never forthcoming. Then when Rajiv Gandhi became prime minister, he hurriedly organised a foundation stone laying ceremony with me for the project, more probably, with an eye to the ensuing elections. He, of course, lost the elections. There are many such examples like this. Only after internal and external pressure, the policy of freight equalisation and of licensing system was ended, which has been of great help both to West Bengal as well as other states. There was also a sustained campaign against West Bengal that propogated that no work gets to be done here because of ???labour troubles.??™ This myth we had to counter not only here in India but also abroad. In the mid-1980s there was an RBI report wherein it was clearly stated that only 3-4 per cent of factory closures were due to the workers??™ actions like strike??™ and, in fact, the vast majority of the closures were due to the outlook and policy of the management. A PRO-PEOPLE GOVERNMENT In West Bengal under Left Front governance, a pro-people, especially pro-poor outlook, has permeated policies. Democracy has flourished and we have recognised even government employees??™ right to strike, although emphasised that strike should be used as the weapon of last resort. We have called upon all workers to take an active interest in production and productivity. Communal harmony has long been a part of the glorious heritage of this state. The rights of people belonging to the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and the dalits have been well secured. While a great conundrum of economic progress was chalked up in the country as a whole, we in West Bengal have managed to achieved outstanding figures in agricultural production, social forestry, pisciculture, and horticulture, topping all-India figures. Fast progress has also been noted in the sphere of industries. Back in 1994 the Left Front government, on the floor of the Assembly enunciated its industrial policy on the demand of the Chambers of Commerce. Industrialisation is being pursued on with especial emphasis on the ???sunrise industries??™ of information technology, food processing, and electronics, generating a high level of employment, especially in downstream units. Attempts are being made to revive sick industries both in the joint sector and in the private sector. We recall how several years ago, we had approached the then prime minister Mrs Indira Gandhi for investment in electronics in West Bengal. She set up a committee, and for a one full year the committee did nothing. Then she informed me that her officers had told her not to invest in West Bengal since it was a border state, and decided instead to invest in an electronics complex in north India. We told her that the security threat was from Pakistan and not Bangladesh, but she would not listen. We acted on our own and at present there is a flourishing electronics complex at Salt Lake. ACHIEVEMENTS To give a few examples of our achievements, the very first Left Front government not only initiated land reforms, but made education free up to the Higher Secondary level. Later 50 engineering colleges were set up from the three existing ones. The sixth Left Front government is determined to achieve a position of primacy in industry nationwide, based on the agricultural advancement already made. However, we brook no complacency anywhere. We tell the people what we have achieved and what we have not. A great deal of work has been done, but plenty more is left which the seventh Left Front government, we are sure, will tackle as soon as it assumes office. Politically, we have triumphed in elections at all levels, from the Panchayat and the Municipalities to the assembly and the Lok Sabha in West Bengal. We have no doubt that the people who reside trust in us, will again rally to make the Left Front win the assembly polls later this year, for the seventh time in succession. People create history, and as we always say, they have created history here in West Bengal. We deeply respect the heightened political consciousness of the people. NEW POLITICAL SITUATION There is a new political situation prevailing in the country at the present moment. Following the defeat of the anti-people and communal BJP-led forces of right reaction, a Congress-led UPA government took office with outside support from the Left. We chose to lend outside support to the Congress-led government, because we wanted to keep the evil BJP out of office. However, our support is not unconditional. We are not quite satisfied with all the policies of the Congress-led UPA government and there are some policy matters that we do take exception to. We hope that the two committees the Left and the Congress committees, will sit down and sort matters out for the sake of the nation and the mass of the people. We have reserved the right to organise and build up struggles and movements on important issues in the interest of the people. We call upon the Union government to implement the Common Minimum Programme. I would like to end this article on a rather personal note. I remember how many decades back, during the pre-independence years, every year there would be a great procession in London to Trafalgar Square and a meeting held there on 26 January, calling for independence. The London Majlis, an association of Indian students, of which I was the general secretary, organised the rally every year. Ignoring the bitter cold of London in January large numbers would congregate and participate in the march and the meeting, such was the enthusiasm. |
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