The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), a Sangh Parivar affiliate, has said the Narendra Modi government has a “moral duty” to provide “colossal funds” in the Budget to labour and other deprived sections to help them recover from the negative impact of demonetisation.
Initially supportive of the note ban move, the BMS has reviewed its assessment and expressed its concern at the immediate side-effects of the decision.
The BMS, the largest of the dozen central trade unions, passed a resolution at the end of its central executive committee meeting on January 10 and 11 in Pune to demand more budgetary allocations on a priority basis for sectors “adversely affected by the so-called demonetisation drive.”
The resolution stated that the BMS had welcomed the move, but now BMS takes “serious note” of the poor implementation, cash shortages, market slowdown, job losses and retrenchments, migrant labour forced to return home, the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) and manufacturing sectors facing setbacks. It said the fallout of demonetisation is likely to have an immediate impact on the overall economic situation “which needs to be realistically assessed.”
The BMS said the government has gained huge revenue from the demonetisation exercise which offers it a “rare opportunity” to radically contribute to the development priorities of labour and other social sectors that have been impacted by demonetisation. These include below poverty line families, socially and economically backward sections, villagers, tribals, lower middle class, agriculture sector and small-scale sector.
The BMS also demanded that the Budget should increase the threshold for income tax exemption from the current Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. Echoing think tank Artha Kranti, it advised the government to “abolish income tax system in near future.”
It said India needed ‘smart villages’ more than ‘smart cities’ and provide more funds for rural India. It asked the government to “aggressively push” Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and various social security and poverty alleviation schemes to “mitigate the ill-effects of demonetization”. The BMS also asked the government to “persuade” and not “pressurize” people to go for digitisation.
The BMS said it welcomed the PM’s announcement on the housing loan scheme, and said meetings be convened to involve trade unions and other stake holders to plan the recovery process from demonetisation.
The BMS resolution also noted that workers have supported demonetisation. It said bank employees needed to be specifically congratulated for going beyond their call of duty and working amid much mental stress “irrespective of their political and other leanings”.
It also noted that demonetisation is “reported” to be an important step to towards curbing black money, corruption, terrorism and fake currency, and that it was going to bring more transparency, tax compliance and formalisation of the information economy.
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