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The Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s congress on Friday passed a resolution to demand that that right to work be enshrined in the Constitution as a fundamental right.
On Thursday, the party congress had passed a resolution that called for job reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the private sector. The previous party congress, in 2012, had also demanded job reservation for SCs and STs in the private sector and expressed concern at joblessness, but stopped short of making right to work a fundamental right.
The party congress, held once in three years, began on Tuesday to discuss the CPI(M)’s political and tactical as well as its draft political resolution. The congress will conclude on Sunday after finalising the two documents and with the election of a new central committee, a politburo and a successor to General Secretary Prakash Karat.
On Friday, the party took up seven resolutions, including on “employment or an unemployment allowance” and making the right to work a fundamental one. It blamed economic policies of the previous 30 years for having contributed to high unemployment.
The party demanded lifting of ban on recruitment by central and state governments and public enterprises, a moratorium on abolition of vacant posts and expediting filling of vacancies. It also asked for a stop to outsourcing in government and public sector enterprises, unemployment allowance to registered unemployed persons and an urban employment guarantee scheme at minimum wage.
“Instead of increasing public investment to ensure the creation of jobs, the government is relying entirely on the organised private sector, and corporations, domestic and foreign, to invest in India and create jobs,” the resolution said.
It said data from the 66th round of the National Sample Survey (NSS) showed a dramatic deceleration in rate of growth of employment in India — declining from 2.7 per cent in 2000-05 to an alarming low of 0.8 per cent in 2009-10.
“The 2015 Economic Survey points out that, while the annual rate of growth of the labour force between 2001 and 2011 was 2.23 per cent, the annual rate of growth of employment over the same period was only 1.4 per cent,” it said, adding that a disturbing feature of unemployment was that it was much higher among youth in the age-group of 15-29 years. Another resolution criticised the Narendra Modi government for diluting the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
The CPI(M) congress said the share of SCs and STs in national resources has dwindled. It said the Modi government had further cut allocations for the Scheduled Caste Special Component Plan, with the shortfall being as high as Rs 46,385 crore. The shortfall in allocations for the Tribal Sub-Plan was equally “shocking” at Rs 20,000 crore. “Thus, while the population of Scheduled Castes and Tribes as a proportion of the total population is around 25 per cent, the share of allocations to Scheduled Castes and Tribes, which were at an all-time low this year, was just 10 per cent,” it said, demanding job reservations for SCs and STs in the private sector.
