In a country where more than 80 crore working people live on Rs 9 to Rs 20 per day, such exorbitant pay packages running into crores enjoyed by corporate managements should look to a democratic mind as immoral and abhorrent as, one may say, the violence of Naxalites.

Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, during the UPA 1 regime, had made a similar appeal to the corporates. That did not create much stir. Probably that was a different time and a different coalition of parties. Possibly, the corporates, in these two years, have gained most from liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation. They now think their stakes are higher and therefore they have to be competitive, too, globally. Multi-million poor working people hardly matter.

The Prime Minister chose not to stand by his Minister's exhortation even formally. Instead he told reporters in Mumbai on October 11, 2009 : “We still believe that salaries are best determined by boards of various companies and the Government, as such, has no intention of imposing restrictions on CEOs' salaries.” He reportedly admitted that he did raise the issue of corporate austerity “in a general way” at the CII's annual conference two years ago.

On the other hand, the Corporate Minister reportedly characterised the salaries of corporate chiefs as “vulgar”. He was reported to have said that when the Government was working on an austerity drive, “we can hardly say we(will) shut our eyes on what salary the CEOs are going to take.” According to TOI, the PM's statement has come as a relief to the Indian Inc; it also says that the annual remuneration of some CEOs in India work out to Rs 50 crore which is more than 12,500 times the per capita income in the country.

One hopes the Corporate Minister's portfolio will remain undisturbed. In a pro-LPG regime, the corporates' say matter the most.

There are other incidents, too, which show up the character of the UPA 2 regime. For instance, when the Jet Airways pilots went on strike, the only issue was the pilots' right to form a union. Since the Jet employers refused to recognise this right, pilots remained on strike. The Government adopted a neutral posture. The entire labour movement supports this demand. The Government's neutrality and the employers' threat to terminate the services did not break the pilots' unity. At last, the Jet management accepted the pilots' right to unionise. More recently, Air India's senior pilots brought flights to a halt through a different action in protest against the management's arbitrary decision to cut salaries. The pilots stood together despite the Government's threat to dismiss them. The solidarity of the ground staff with the pilots finally made the Government see reason and find an amicable solution. A Government which defends the right of private corporates to pay crores in salaries to CEOs, could not possibly have the moral strength to persuade the pilots to accept a cut in salaries, especially when they have to daily interact with pilots across the world.

The Manmohan Singh Government committed to a persistent drive to help the LPG system of economy, is allergic to the organised labour. As a result, even professors of prestigious IIMs and IITs have for the first time entered the struggle arena. The rejected the HRD Ministry's proposals on pay scales and termed them as an infringement of academic rights. The faculty of all seven IITs decided to observe a token fast. They found the Ministry's “revised” order of September 16 “completely unacceptable”. They said the issue was not just about higher pay scales. The faculty are primarily against the restrictions on premier institutes in the HRD notification. “We want flexible cadre system that we have always had,” a spokesperson said.

Insensitivity, thy name is UPA 2 regime. A few “small” developments need to be mentioned here. For instance, at the Rural Development Ministers conference held last month, they were told that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's Budget announcement to raise NREGA minimum wage to Rs 100 per day was not for immediate implementation; it was only a commitment. So wage freeze under NREGA has to continue despite the abnormal rise in prices of foodgrains and other essential goods.

The PM has constituted a 11-member high-level task force, to look into problems faced by micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) apparently because their associations had approached the PM to look into various problems “particularly related to the global economic crisis”. It will be headed by the Prime Minister's Principal Secretary T K A Nair. It is required to submit its report in three months. This is a welcome step because this most employment-intensive sector has been the most neglected under the LPG regime.

The question, however, is: Why has the report of the Arjun Sengupta Commission on Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector which only had dealt with the MSMEs and its labour force remained shelved? The Commission was set up by the UPA 1 Government in 2004 and had submitted its report to the UPA 2 regime and has made valuable recommendations. Probably, these recommendations did not suit the LPG policy-makers. The task force report will certainly be awaited with interest. (IPA Service)