The question of an otherwise socially-insulated big businessmen, senior corporate executives, top bureaucrats and employers such as Ambanis, Tatas, Birlas, Mahindras, Mittals, Jindals, Kirloskars, Murugappas, GVKs, GMRs and their ilk being aware of the actual retail prices of such daily dire necessities of the common man does not even arise. They too are into bigger things, running business and industry, compressing jobs for fatter corporate bottom line, creating wealth for themselves and the nation and serving shareholders of whom they form the individual majority blocks. But, these aberrations don’t hide the truth that almost the rest of the vast nation is reeling under all-time high food and fuel prices.

In many parts of the country, brinjal or eggplant is now selling at Rs. 60-80 per kilo. Ridge gourd sells at Rs. 50-60, parawal Rs.50-60, lady’s finger Rs. 50-65, green chilli Rs. 80-100, ginger Rs. 70-80 and coriander leaves Rs. 120-140 per kilo. The wholesale prices of potato have shot up by nearly 25 per cent, onion by 50 per cent, fruits by 30 per cent and meat, fish, eggs, etc. all by an average of 20 per cent. It is another matter that at farmers’ end the prices of vegetables are just around 20 per cent of what they are quoted at the retail market. The middlemen and greedy traders are pocketing the rest. These corrupt practices are nothing new. There are several laws to curb profiteering. But, they exist only on paper. It has always been so in the last 60 years.

Wholesale and retail market operators say the trend will continue and prices will stay firm through the ensuing festival season or until early November. While the government statisticians are concerned only about the wholesale prices in specific markets for indexation (WPI), ordinary consumers, especially those belonging to low-income group and fixed-paid industrial pensioners, are finding it increasingly hard to cope with capriciously behaving high retail prices of food articles. The Reserve Bank’s inflation control measures had little impact on the retail market front. Frequent oil price increases are making things even worse.

Of course, for the underfed, undernourished and ever-so-tolerant Indian poor, it has been an everyday challenge to deal with the ever rising living costs with their falling real income. The government appears to be totally unconcerned. So are the industry and the big business. The matter has become such a routine that even the media and so-called social activists have given up on it. Fruits, vegetables and other food stuff are still exported. Middlemen in both the domestic and export markets are having a free run. With the general public concern apparently shifted to corruption, such a mundane matter as retail food price, which affect only the poor and the lower middle class, could hardly been an appropriate subject for discussion in the current scam season.

However, the consumer hardship issue, especially with regard to extremely low earning industrial pensioners, was unwittingly provoked by a short innocuous statement recently made by an unnamed senior bureaucrat in the union labour ministry that the government is trying to raise the minimum monthly pension for retired organised sector industrial workers to Rs. 1,000 in view of the growing hardship of this category of people.

The labour ministry statement, dry and devoid of any real concern about the horrendous plight of lakhs of such industrial pensioners living on pittance in the present day inflation situation, also stated that the issue may take some time (at least two years) for a resolution as it would require some government subsidy and a policy planning at the highest level. It pointed out that the workers’ pension fund under the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) scheme is already stressed and the current contributors or serving workers can’t be burdened to make an additional 0.2 to 0.8 per cent contribution which may be required to provide extra payment to those very low earning industrial pensioners.

The organised sector industrial workers’ pension is contributory. The policy was pronounced about two decades ago by the government under the pressure of national trade unions. The public sector corporations were the first to introduce. The private organised sector followed somewhat grudgingly. The pension amount is decided on the basis of a worker’s contribution to the fund until the retirement age. Not all workers were of the same age and under the wage level when they entered the pension scheme. Low waged workers at an advanced age at the time of introduction of the fund received little support from the long-term fund with the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) after the retirement. Neither the democratically elected government, nor the corporate sector, which often lectures on social responsibility, thought of the need for fixing a reasonable minimum pension for industrial workers and its periodical review, say, at least once in five years.

Unlike in the case of the government employees’ pension scheme which is dearness allowance (DA) linked, the industrial workers’ pension is fixed. It has remained fixed in the last 20 years or so, since it was introduced. The value of the pension has steadily eroded over the years as inflation regularly ate into the pie. There is no provision of a periodical revision of industrial workers’ pension. At least four lakh retired organised sector workers, representing less than 20 per cent of the total number of industrial pensioners, fall under the category of those receiving monthly pension below Rs. 1,000. Most of these low-earning pensioners or their nominees — in the event of the death of the original pensioner — get paid between Rs. 500 and Rs. 750 per month.

The government claims the pension fund is not earning enough to meet even the existing commitment. The EPFO is more comfortable if these people fully commute their pension and surrender their membership by opting for a one-time lump sum settlement amount, which is 100 times the amount of one’s monthly pension. This means if a pensioner fully commutes his monthly pension of Rs. 500, he takes home only Rs. 50,000 after the final settlement. Not many are willing to take the EPFO bait since the monthly bank interest for senior citizens even at the current high rate on Rs. 50,000 could at the most be only around Rs. 400. Bank interests fluctuate. They stand to lose more by commuting the pension.

Critics and trade unionists suspect ‘crocodile tears’ in the sudden government intention to raise the minimum industrial pension to Rs. 1,000 per month. It may be used as an alibi to push the much touted pension reform, which basically focuses on the permission to invest majority of pension funds in stock market. A government-business nexus has long been working on to get pension and provident funds managed by private and multinational fund managers and substantially invested in securities market. Should it succeed, it has the potential to emerge as the biggest corruption scandal ever, even bigger than the 2G spectrum scam. The size of the combined PF and pension corpus managed by the EPFO is in excess of Rs. 2 trillion or about US$ 50 billion. Currently, the EPFO has more than 40 million contributing members from over 4,50,000 establishments. The fear is that the proposed minimum industrial pension payment may be linked with a pension fund management reform.

The question is: if the minimum pension level for industrial workers or EPFO members is to be raised under humanitarian grounds, why benchmarking it at such a low level as Rs. 1,000? Why not at Rs. 3,000 per month or more? After all, what is Rs. 1,000 really worth for a person for a whole month in the present market condition? What can an old pensioner buy with the sum when a hemoglobin raising (Eporise) injection these days costs Rs. 1,400? If the government could waste Rs. 60,000 crore in a two-week Commonwealth Games in Delhi, why it has to wait for a time consuming detailed inter-ministerial level discussion or the Justice Srikrishna commission recommendation on whether or not retired industrial workers deserve a bare minimum pension of Rs. 1,000 or so per month?

It is not the corruption in public life alone which is ruining the society. The total political neglect of the working class and lower strata of the population is systematically weakening the Indian nation and forcing the deprived youth take the easy path of crime and terrorism. If corruption is a scourge in any society, poverty is a bigger curse. What is the future of that society where the real GDP movers like toiling farmers and firm workers, the unsung heroes, are made to die in hordes of malnutrition and starvation?
(IPA Service)