After meeting the Indian big business and corporates and assuring them that the ‘reforms’ will be aggressively taken forward, the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is now pressurising the Congress MPs in the Standing Committees to speed up the bills for returning to the Parliament for taking speedy decisions.
What are the bills that the Government urgently wants to pass and please the corporates?
They are 1)Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority(PFRDA) Bill
2)Banking Regulations Amendment Bill
3) Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill etc.
The PFRDA Bill is intended to appoint a Regulatory Authority for Pension Fund, utilise the pension fund corpus for the market, gradually change the pension rules to the detriment of the workers. etc. The government has already changed the defined pension for government employees to contributory pension scheme for those retired after 01-01-2004. Moves are afloat to change the pension scheme for those who are recruited before 01-01-2004 also. The pension security of the government employees will be in jeopardy if the bill is made in to an Act.
The Banking Regulations (Amendment) Bill is intended to de-regularise the banking rules to the benefit of the rich and corporates. The Insurance Laws(Amendment) Bill is intended to ‘liberalise’ the sector and allow unlimited FDI as also favour the private banks.
All these Bills could not be moved and passed in the Parliament during the period of the UPA I government due to the stiff opposition of the Left Parties without whose support the government could not continue. Now that the UPA II government has got majority without the support Left Parties, it wants to steam-roller these bills at the earliest. That is why the Finance Minister is on an aggressive mood.
The workers and their unions have opposed all these bills and have gone on agitation also. But at this stage, the struggle should be further strengthened to compel the government to drop the bills.