by PRABHAT PATNAIK
Neo-liberalism propagates a set of outright falsehoods to present itself in a favourable light compared to the preceding dirigiste regime in India. The basic theme is to suggest that under neo-liberalism there has been such an acceleration of the growth rate of Gross Domestic Product that the people as a whole have become much better off, and vast masses of them have been lifted out of poverty (one particular enthusiast has even claimed that poverty now afflicts only 2 per cent of the population). Of course the dirigiste period was not all milk and honey, and nobody criticised it more trenchantly than the Left; but the claim that neo-liberalism represents an advance over it as far as the people’s living standard is concerned is a preposterous one.
I shall confine myself here to economic indicators alone, and not go into the massive impact that neo-liberalism has had in undermining democracy (even before the current fascistic regime), in making self-centredness and self-interest far more pervasive in society than earlier (as is to be expected under unrestrained capitalism), in giving rise to an aggrandising elite which has nothing but contempt for the poor, and in destroying the moral compass of the nation so thoroughly that it has even led to a situation where a demonstration of public anger against the worst genocide in living memory is disallowed by the government without causing media outrage.
The most tangible and tragic economic indicator is the suicide of over three lakh peasants and agricultural labourers in the last three decades, which has certainly had no precedent in post-independence India and whose roots can be traced directly to the distress into which peasant agriculture has been driven owing to the withdrawal of State support under neo-liberalism. This withdrawal is especially evident in the removal of price-support for cash crops that had been available earlier, resulting in domestic prices fluctuating wildly in sync with the world prices of these crops.
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