Amritsar, December 15
Criticising the foreign policy of the country, Mr Chandra Shekhar today emphasised the need to respond positively on the holding of the 12th summit of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) which had been postponed by Pakistan indefinitely. The summit was scheduled to be held in Islamabad from January 11.
“SAARC came into being in 1985 for mutual cooperation and economic development of the South Asian region and India had played a vital role in its formation,” he said.
Pakistan had accused India of looking for excuses to “sabotage” SAARC summit ever since it was decided to be held in Islamabad.
Addressing a galaxy of Indian economists at the annual session of the Indian Society of Labour Economists (ISLE), here today, Mr Shekhar lamented that the future of India seemed to be bleak due to ill-conceived policies.
On the World Trade Organisation, Mr Shekhar said multi-national companies had been coming to India on the pattern of East India Company which later ruled the country for centuries. “The East India Company had not reached India with weapons, it had entered on pretext of business like the MNCs”. He said now our Prime Minister himself had started making request to the MNCs to
invest in the country. The former Prime Minister said no country could survive on the basis of the investment of financial help from foreign countries.
Coming heavily on the “self-centred” leaders of the country, Mr Chandra Shekhar said now politics had deviated from real issues like unemployment and poverty. It seemed to centre on caste or communal basis which was a dangerous trend.
The former Prime Minister said the third front in the country was non-existent and the secular forces seemed to have taken a back seat. Answering a question, he said secular persons like him also stood isolated in the prevailing circumstances.
Mr Chandra Shekhar claimed that he had a solution to the ticklish Babri masjid issue with him but four successive prime ministers who belonged to different political parties had never bothered to seek his guidance. However, when asked about the “solution”, Mr Shekhar refused to disclose it. He, however, revealed that a solution was being worked out with diverse political ideologies through Mr Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, senior Congress leader, Mr Sharad Pawar and the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Kalyan Singh.
Ridiculing the Army build-up and its subsequent withdrawal, the former Prime Minister asked, what India had gained out of this entire exercise. He said India failed to give a satisfactory reply to the statement of General Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, that he (Gen Musharraf) had been ruling up to Wagah and he was not responsible for the attack on Indian Parliament which was far from the international border. He squarely blamed security personnel of the country.
On initiating dialogue with Sikh militants through his emissaries during his stint as Prime Minister, Mr Shekhar said he had a clear vision to resolve the Punjab problem but politicking at the highest-level aborted his mission.
Delivering the presidential address, the Vice-Chancellor of Delhi University, Dr Deepak Nayyar, at the 44th annual session of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), said the world had become complex and diverse. The characterisation of work had become more complete as there had been an explicit shift in focus from labour to work. It was also possible to note a change in the nature of work and there was a clear shift in emphasis from workers as a class to workers as individuals, said Dr Nayyar.
Dr Nayyar, speaking on the session which was organised by the Punjab School of Economics of Guru Nanak Dev University here today, pointed out that this outcome had been facilitated by the decline and fall of trade unions in industrialised countries where trade unions had lost the battle in the arena of both politics and economics. He said it was hardly surprising that trade unions in developing countries had fared no better. The failure to recognise the significance of changed realities had meant that trade unions were now confined simply to one segment of space in the world of work.
The Vice-Chancellor said the changes in the nature of work also meant that livelihood no longer depended upon employment alone, although the work was necessary yet it was not sufficient. What mattered was the income it yield. There was a threat to livelihood everywhere. In industrial society, employment creation was limited. Even if it was at higher wages it benefitted a few. For a large proportion of the workforce, income opportunities were provided through insecure employment or casual employment in low wage occupations. The situation in developing countries was worse.
Mr Deepak Nayyar said the poor, at the margins, were the most vulnerable. The problem was compounded by exclusion, which in the logic of markets would exclude people as producers or sellers if they had neither assets nor capabilities. An economic exclusion from livelihood often created or accentuated a political exclusion from rights. The emerging view was concerned with the realisation of rights in a wider economic, social and political context so that rights at work were a part of development agenda. The change in thinking about rights reflected the change in thinking about development.
The exclusion of people from development had become as much less acceptable with the passage of time. And even if development had not brought about an improvement in the living conditions of ordinary people it was increasingly recognised that the welfare of humankind was the essence of development. The literature on the right to development and the conception of development as freedom were about this quest.
