The plight of the working class is seldom part of public discourse, Gujarat legislator and Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani has said.
Participating in a seminar on ‘Neo-liberalism and the future of democracy’ at the National Students Parliament Kerala – 2019 on Sunday, Mr. Mevani said that labourers had been relegated to a neglected entity with the emergence of globalisation and neo-liberal policies.
“The exploitation suffered by the working class is hardly talked about by the political parties or the mainstream media. It is no surprise that 60 crore workers are denied minimum wages in the country. Notably, such is the farce of the much-vaunted Gujarat model of development that class 4 employees, including peons, liftmen and sanitary workers, of the Gujarat Assembly are denied minimum wages. They will not dare approach the government claiming that their basic rights are violated,” Mr. Mevani said.
CPI(M) Polit Bureau member M.A. Baby expressed concern over the repercussions of neo-liberalisation in the field of higher education. The free-run of finance capital threatened to vitiate the education sector, he said.
He alleged that the electoral process had become vulnerable to the influence of corporate and foreign powers. Loopholes were being made to make contributions to political parties, enabling them to intervene in Indian politics. Unaccounted donations could now be made by non-existent companies without the knowledge of the Election Commission of India, Mr. Baby said.
Speaking on the occasion, former Chief Secretary K. Jayakumar said that officials or activists who strived to preserve the environment were often dubbed as anti-national, mainly owing to the fact that they worked against the interests of corporate firms.
Kerala Administrative Reforms Commission member C.P. Nair and Kerala State Planning Board member K.N. Harilal spoke.
