The Indian government is pushing austerity rather than stimulus and using the pandemic as an opportunity to introduce policies they thought would go through without much opposition - but that's not what happened. Jayati Ghosh joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast. Rush Transcript Paul Jay Hi, I

The Indian government is pushing austerity rather than stimulus and using the pandemic as an opportunity to introduce policies they thought would go through without much opposition - but that's not what happened. Jayati Ghosh joins Paul Jay on theAnalysis.news podcast.

Rush Transcript

Paul Jay

Hi, I'm Paul Jay. Welcome to theAnalysis.news podcast. Please don't forget we have a matching grant campaign on now. We only survive because people like you donate. And so if you haven't donated already or if you want to up your donation, it will be matched.

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On the 26 of November 2020, a general strike was held across India. The strike was organized by 10 trade unions across the country and were supported by the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India, Marxist, the Communist Party of India, Marxist, Leninist Liberation and other left wing parties.

Trade unions estimate two hundred and fifty million people took part in the strike. Strike was followed by a farmers march to New Delhi, which arrived there on the 30th of November with tens of thousands of farmers surrounding Delhi, increasing the hundreds of thousands by December 3rd as coveted savages India, which is amongst the worst affected countries in the world. The farmers of India continue their protest. By some estimates, the numbers have now grown to two million people. Now joining us to discuss the massive protests in India is Jayati Ghosh, taught economics at Harvard University in New Delhi for nearly 35 years.

She's now joined the  PERI institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She's authored or edited 19 books including Never Done and Poorly Paid Women's Work and Globalizing India, and she's authored more than 200 scholarly articles. Thanks for joining us.

Jayati Ghosh

It's a pleasure. 

So, Jayati, tell us exactly the story and how the strike began and how it evolved into the farmers protest.

Jayati Ghosh

Well, the workers strike really came about because the government has used this period of covid not to do anything for the welfare of the people, but to push through all kinds of laws that really they would have had faced a lot of protest against otherwise. So they introduced four new labor codes, which are supposedly designed to modernize the labor laws. But of course, they basically end up disempowering labor and destroying the capacity of bargaining and reducing their ability to demand minimum wages, basic working conditions, easing the possibility of extending working hours and all kinds of things.

Now, as you know, in India, ninety five percent of our workers are informal and really do not have rights to speak already. So the argument that you need to further deregulate to actually make investment more interesting is ridiculous. And it's just one of the many ways in which this government has tried to actually impose various things which are deeply undemocratic, using the pandemic as an excuse.

The farmers movement is slightly different, it didn't quite arise out of that worker strike, it emerged separately because along with those labor codes t...