PENSION FUND REGULATORY AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY BILL

UPA GOVERNMENT OUT TO PERPETRATE CRIMES UPON PEOPLE - Tapan Sen

THE Congress-led government of the day is on a spree to commit one crime after another on the nation and the people. If the UPA-1 regime could not fulfil its wish-list of anti-people measures as it was dependent on the Left to remain in power, the Congress now has allies like the Trinamul Congress and DMK and an “opposition” like the BJP who support the government in most of its criminal acts.

These crimes are a legion --- from arrogant patronisation to allowing the speculators and hoarders in the food market to jack the prices up and earn windfall profit. It did everything to enable the corporate houses to loot the public exchequer, e.g. in telecom spectrum sale or in procurement of contracts for the Commonwealth Games.

On March 24, the government reintroduced the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, which the Left intervention had forced to lapse during the last Lok Sabha. On March 24, when the Left MPs in Lok Sabha pressed for a division during the introduction of the bill, as usual the allies lent support to the bill while the main opposition, BJP, also joined in bailing the government out. As it is, this bill is going to facilitate a loot on the social security right of the mass of toiling people, in order too to pamper and patronise the speculators.

The PFRDA Bill proposes a paradigm shift of the very concept of social security like pension from a defined benefit to a contribution arrangement. It liberates the government from its basic obligation to provide for secured benefits and tells the people to purchase their pension, if they so desire, from the market. The new concept will be imposed on all central government employees joining the service on or after January 1, 2004. The bill envisages pension to be given to the employees and workers at the rate based on return on their own money invested in the market. It has mentioned in no uncertain term that there will be no “implicit or explicit assurance” of guaranteed return.

The message is loud and clear. The pension will no more be secure and no more linked with the price index. Workers have to make hefty contributions to get a pension but even after making their contributions, they will have no guarantee that their life-long contribution will fetch them an assured amount. Everything will be decided by the gods of the market. The accumulated contribution of the workers would inevitably flow to the stock market, to be speculated by the fund managers appointed by the Pension Regulatory Authority. There will be no guarantee from the government. Pension amounts will go down if the market is low, and life-long savings will be lost if the market crashes.

So far, the experiences of pension fund investment in stock market in various countries has been that, on all occasions, workers’ money in pension fund was used to raise the temperature in the stock market, whereupon brokers and speculators always gained and workers always lost.

As this bill proposes, pension will no more be a social security, i.e. a secure return at the end of service life. The bill seeks to convert pension, or for that matter all kinds of social security, into a business for speculators. Once this bill becomes an act, other social security funds like provident fund etc will, sooner or later, come in its ambit; the government may well retune its monetary policy and interest rate regime to ensure this disastrous inevitability.

While the PFRDA Bill ensures liberal unhindered entry of foreign investors in the pension business, it also ensures that parliament would not decide any ceiling on foreign participation. This will be decided by a subservient government through an executive order, in the interest of speculative finance capital and foreign masters.

If this not a crime upon the people, then what else it is?

POINT TO PONDER

The point to seriously ponder is that homework for all these three disastrous bills started during the BJP-led NDA regime and that the UPA-1 regime made frequent efforts to push them through, though in vain. Also, both the alliances, NDA and UPA, hah had certain common partners in these exercises of criminality. Two such common partners have been the Trinamul Congress and DMK who aided in these disastrous anti-worker and anti-people exercises. None of them can wash its hands off.

Moreover, the main opposition party, the BJP, has also joined hands in perpetrating these crimes on people and the nation.

In fact, it is the Left parties and the working people’s movement, whose aspirations coincide with the Left’s vision on national interest and people’s right, who have been putting up a real opposition to such neo-liberal crimes.

The perpetrators of these crimes, their allies and their hangers-on stand identified today, but their game is not yet over. Though these bills have been introduced, they have not been passed. The situation demands more mobilisation and more militant resistance outside --- in the workplaces, on the streets. Only the Left can lead this struggle and help people recognise their real enemies.

Courtesy: www.pd.cpim.org/