Press Release
The biggest hurdle in facing the recession is the Govt’s lack of political will
12th November, 2022 | New Delhi
“In my entire career as a public servant I haven’t witnessed the extraction of public wealth for private profit on the scale that we see today”, said Jawhar Sircar, Rajya Sabha member, Trinamool Congress, while addressing the second day of the Conference: “The Dynamics of the Global Recession: Repercussions on India & the Way Forward” organized by Centre for Financial Accountability, Economic Research Foundation and the Focus on the Global South held at the Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi.
Senior economist, Prabhat Patnaik, while speaking in the session on Recession to Re-imagination, said, “It is impossible to imagine a way out of this crisis without going beyond neo-liberalism. State expenditure on social services like food, healthcare, employment, etc. has to be seen fundamentally as a right of the people and not the generosity of the state.”
Congress spokesperson Gourav Vallabh added that if we have to fix the economy then “the MSME sector needs to be reset completely for job creation. He said that spending on the social sector has come down from 9% to 5% after 2014. This has to increase. He suggested market cap based taxes for revenue generation.”
Contrasting with the steps taken by the Latin American countries, senior economist Jayati Ghosh said that “while there are external constraints in addressing the crisis here, the greater constraint is a domestic one owing to the political choices of India.”
Accountability activist, Anjali Bhardwaj, said that in a democracy, any re-imagination must have people at the centre of all policy making. There is deliberate policy blindness in the regime, it is clearly working for capital. She said that we need a framework of rights; information necessary for people’s empowerment.
Most of the speakers through the day recognized the unprecedented wealth inequality, unemployment and lack of social spending as the major concerns facing the people and spoke of the significance of a wealth tax on the super rich to be able to spend on social sector. Aruna Roy used the slogan “Ameeron se paisa lo, sabke vikas mein paisa do.”
Senior economist, Arun Kumar emphasized that international finance capital has the power to keep us divided. The challenge is both internal and external. In order to make change possible, we need thriving socio-economic movements.
The two days conference was attended by students, activists, members of civil society, economists and policymakers. Other speakers who addressed the conference on the second day were Sushil Khanna, Dipa Sinha, Ishan Anand, Amrita Johri, Praveen Jha, Zico Dasgupta and V Sridhar.
For more information, contact: Anirban Bhattacharya (8826165416)