False promises made to people and misleading information shared in the Presidential address

I thought this was Rashtrapati Ji’s last speech (to Parliament). Coming from a marginalised section himself, he would surely say something for the upliftment of the downtrodden, I had thought. But I did not find any such thing in his address. It neither mentions inflation or unemployment; nor does it mention anything about measures to alleviate challenges faced by Dalit and tribal communities or about the poor conditions of farmers and labourers. Efforts are being made to hide the continuous aggression from China and there is complete silence about the increasing threats to our democracy.

Our democracy is under great threat today. If someone speaks the truth, he is called a traitor; if a farmer raises his voice, you call him a terrorist. Labourers are described as Naxalites. If people raise questions about corpses of people who died of Covid buried on the banks of rivers, you say they are old rituals.

The country today is battling with unprecedented unemployment, and there is great dissatisfaction among the youth as they are not getting work. Investment is not coming in and big manufacturing units are closing down. Government jobs are getting scantier.

In 2014, you promised to provide 2 crore jobs every year. But how many people actually got jobs? In this budget, you have announced the creation of 60 lakh jobs in five years. The youth in Bihar, UP and other states are taking to the streets for railway jobs and in December 2021 alone, more than one crore salaried people are said to have lost their jobs.

There are about nine lakh vacancies in the Government of India. There are 15% (237,295) vacancies in Railways, 40% (247,842) in Defence and 12% (128,842) under the Ministry of Home Affairs. Forget about creating new jobs, you have failed to even fill up the vacancies. What is more, you have ignored reservation for SC and ST. There are hardly any SC or ST secretary in the PMO or to the Government of India.

The unemployment rate for women is 26%, which is three times higher than that of men at 8%. In the largest employing MSME sector, 60% of the units are on the verge of closure. You say a lot about empowering MSMEs but nothing is happening on the ground.

MGNREGA, which Modi ji used to condemn as a living monument of UPA’s failure, came to the rescue of the people in the pandemic. Even according to your own calculations, at the minimum wage of Rs 235 or at the average of Rs 200, the government should have paid out Rs 1.80 lakh crore under the MGNREGA. But you provided for only Rs 73 thousand crores in the budget. You promised work for 150 days but in reality, you gave less than 20 days’ employment to the poor.

There is no mention of inflation or measures to deal with it in the address either. India’s Wholesale Price Index rose to 14.23% in November 2021, breaking a 12-year record. In 2020, prices of crude oil fell to $ 25 per barrel in the international market, but you kept hiking the domestic prices of petrol and diesel. Petrol-diesel prices increased by more than 30% between January and November 2021 but the excise duty on petroleum products were raised by more than 275%. The Government earned more than Rs 25 lakh crore from excise duty on petroleum products in the last seven years. But not one penny of that money was used to help the poor.

Inflation has made life miserable for the poor. The price of LPG cylinders has increased by over 117%. A cylinder that was available for Rs 414 in 2014 is worth about Rs 1000 today. The prices of all essential things have gone up.

Grain prices have increased by 39% over 2014, tur dal prices increased by 39% while mustard oil prices have increased by 41%.

The promises you made were not fulfilled. Mere taali bajana and thali bajana will not solve this issue.

It is shameful that we are ranked at number 101 out of 116 countries in the Hunger Index. You claim that you are giving free food grains to 80 crore people. But it is because of the Food Security Act brought by the UPA Government. This plan was launched based on the initiative of UPA Chairperson Smt. Sonia Gandhi, and implemented by the government of Dr. Manmohan Singh. You had opposed this plan at that time.

Economic inequality has increased in the country. One percent of the people in the country possess the bulk of the nation’s wealth. But no effort is being made to reduce poverty.

Your foreign policy as well as national security policy have been poor. The issue of China is of vital importance. In 2013, when there was tension on the Indo-China border, Modi ji had said that the then government should have threatened China with laal aankh (red eyes). At that time Modi ji was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. But now when China has grabbed our land, built houses and bridges, why are his eyes not turning red? He says nothing about China and has maintained a studied silence, the kind of maun he maintained while meditating in the cave of Kedarnath. Our soldiers lost their lives defending our land but Modi Ji is quiet.

India’s exports to China have increased by 24 per cent to USD 21.54 billion during January-November 2021, while imports jumped to USD 78.88 billion in the same period as against USD 52.16 billion in the corresponding period of 2020, Parliament was informed. Our imports from China were worth Rs 3.8 lakh crore in 2013, which has increased to Rs 7.2 lakh crore in 2021. Our trade deficit was Rs 2.70 lakh crore in 2013 which has now increased to Rs 5.25 lakh crore. Our imports from China are four times what we export to China. Is it self-reliance or reliance on China?

You had claimed that terrorism would be eradicated by abrogation of Article 370. But terrorism has actually gone up and over 500 terrorist incidents have been recorded.

Why is India not becoming a dominant economic power despite tall talks and grandiose announcements of Make in India, is something we need to reflect on. The annual growth rate of manufacturing sector has become negative and you are privatising profit-making PSUs.

You sold Air India because it was running in loss but LIC is profitable. Why are you privatising it? Public sector undertakings or airports are all being privatised and you are also threatening to privatise PSU banks. Jobs are declining and reservation in jobs is also getting affected. The benefit of reservation available to the poor from backward classes, scheduled castes, tribes and EWS have been extinguished more or less completely. If you promote jobs on contract and keep people on daily wages, what kind of job security can people get?

Our PSUs had 13.50 lakh regular employees in 2013, but the number has come down to nine (9) lakh in 2020.

In 2013, three (3) lakh people were working on contract; the number is now five (5) lakh.

There is mention of farmers in the address, but there is no mention of doubling their income. The reality is that the income of farmers has declined. The address didn’t even mention the repeal of the black agricultural laws that you had once described as the best.

You had brought in the black agriculture laws to help industrialists. The farmer’s agitation continued for more than a year and over 700 farmers lost their lives. Had the law been withdrawn earlier and the MSP issue was resolved, this would not have happened. No compensation was given to the families of farmers who lost their lives. I would request that you listen to their other demands as well.

BJP and RSS leaders called Annadatas Khalistanis and Mawalis. The son of a union minister rammed a jeep from behind on poor farmers and killed four of them. There is nothing in the President’s address about this. You must first remove the Minister of State for Home as he influences the investigation going on in this matter. He had after all threatened the farmers that he would straighten them in two minutes if they did not fall in line.

Insurance companies made a profit of Rs 18 thousand crore in the crop insurance scheme. Prices of fertilisers, seeds, diesel, electricity, water and agricultural equipment have gone up. But you continue to help the rich, many of whom are your friends and are connected to you.

Crime against Scheduled Castes have increased by 30% and crime against tribals by 26% between 2015 and 2020. Children from the weakest sections have been denied scholarships. From 2018 till now, post-matric scholarship for SC students has come down from Rs 6000 crore to Rs 1300 crore.

The Christian community has been subjected to 500 attacks since 2021. Many institutions, including well-known institutions founded by Mother Teresa, have been hounded and harassed. In Karnataka and other BJP ruled states, minorities are being harassed under the anti-conversion laws.

Even a festival like Christmas, celebrated peacefully all over the world by people of all religious beliefs has also been disrupted by hooligans encouraged by the Sangh Parivar, bringing a bad name to the country across the world. I condemn what happened on December 25-26 and December 31. Many people from the ruling party send their children to missionary schools. They compete to get admission in English schools. But all of them have been completely silent on attacks on the Church.

You spent a lot of money on Namami Gange Yojana, but Ganga is still dirty. You had said in 2017 that by August 2022, the bullet train would start running. Now the deadline has been extended to 2028. The National Education Policy was mentioned in the address, but the Right to Education Act was brought in by the UPA and you are distorting it.

You took credit for managing the pandemic but during the most dreadful second wave, Modi ji, you failed. If you release the real figures, you will know that more than 50 lakh deaths were caused by Covid. Corpses were burnt on the roads. Many dead bodies were floated down the Ganga river.

The Economic Survey mentions 50% Indians getting fully vaccinated. But the address spoke of 70% vaccination. Compensation of 50 thousand Rupees in case of death from Covid is mentioned. But we should know how many people have actually received this amount. Our party had demanded a compensation of Rs 4 lakh.

I want to say a few things about PM CARES. Our armed forces, PSUs and many other people have donated to this fund, then why can it not be audited by the CAG?

The four labour laws should also be withdrawn in the same way as three laws related to farmers were withdrawn. These are very damaging to the workers and curbs trade union rights.

All the benefits you mentioned about demonetisation have turned out to be misleading. You made fun of what Dr Manmohan Singh said, but everything he had said about Demonetisation came true. There is more cash in the market today than ever before. The GST was also implemented arbitrarily, causing a lot of damage to small businesses.

You are using ED or CBI against your political opponents. You conduct income tax raids. If there are economic offenders, take action against them by all means. But action is initiated only against those who come in the way of your party. If they defect to your side, you give him ticket and cases of ED and CBI are closed. This has happened in Goa, Karnataka, Gujarat, Manipur and several other places.

You take credit for what our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and subsequent Prime Ministers created. You put up new boards, give new names. You keep changing names of the entities created by them and give voice to your hatred for Nehru Ji. I remember what Babasaheb had said: ‘Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship.’

You are making the President give false promises in his address. But we will continue to expose these false promises to the people.

(Edited and condensed text of the speech by Mallikarjun Kharge in the Rajya Sabha on February 2 while speaking on the Motion of Thanks for the President’s address to Parliament)

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)