Strike over Modi’s policies disrupts banks, transport

Bloomberg

India’s transport and banking services were disrupted on Wednesday as millions of employees joined a strike called by the country’s major trade unions to protest against prime minister Narendra Modi’s economic policies.
About 250 million people across at least 12 states including Kerala, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Assam participated in the nationwide strike, said Tapan Sen, general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions. Farmers in many of the states also joined in road blockades, he said.
The one-day stoppage has been called by 10 trade unions, affiliated to communist parties and the opposition Congress party. They’re demanding the government rein in price rises and unemployment, provide social security for workers, stop disinvestment in certain state-owned companies and halt overseas investment in railways, insurance, coal and defense sectors. The trade unions are seeking “reversal of the anti-worker, anti-people, anti-national policies of the government,” they said in a joint statement.
The union affiliated with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which claims 10 million members, did not participate in the strike.

Rising Unrest
An estimated 500,000 of the 850,000 employees at state-run banks will participate today [wednesday], CH Venkatachalam, general secretary, All India Bank Employees’ Association, said. Although State Bank of India, the nation’s largest, has stayed out of the strike, operations of all other state-run banking and insurance institutions will be affected, he said.
“We are concerned about the planned changes in labour laws and the government’s plans to privatise and merge banks without attacking the main problem of bad loans,” Venkatachalam said. Still, the government ruled out any impact from the stoppages.
“They have been doing this type of strikes in every one or two years with many demands,” said Prakash Javadekar, the minister for information and broadcasting who interacts with media on government policy. “It has no impact.”
The strike is being held at a time when Modi is grappling with the slowest economic growth since 2009, an unemployment rate that’s surged to a more than four-decade high and mass protests against his Hindu nationalist agenda.
While general strikes are not uncommon in India, Wednesday’s protests mark the latest in a string of street demonstrations.
Modi has been facing opposition over his new religion-based citizenship law and Sunday’s violent attacks on students and academics by masked assailants in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

India official sees budget gap widening to 3.8%
Bloomberg

India’s budget deficit could widen to 3.8% of gross domestic product in the current fiscal year, breaching a target of 3.3%, according to a senior official.
The law allows the government to exceed the target by as much as half a percentage point, the official told reporters, asking not to be identified in line with rules. The government can also miss its target if it faces acts of war, a collapse in farm output, or the economy is undergoing structural reforms with unanticipated fiscal
implications.
The government is facing a revenue crunch as economic growth slows, putting pressure on the budget. An official GDP estimate showed India’s economy will probably grow 5% in the fiscal year to March and post nominal growth of 7.5%. That’s lower than the 11.5% nominal growth the government forecast in its budget in July.
The reduction in nominal GDP estimates will push the government’s fiscal deficit higher by 12 basis points, or upwards of 3.4%, said Soumya Kanti Ghosh, chief economist at State Bank of India in Mumbai.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has already breached its deficit goals in the previous two years.
The shortfall exceeded the target by 1 percentage point in the last fiscal year and by 3 percentage points the year before.
Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das told the Financial Express newspaper last month that economic conditions were appropriate for the government to invoke the clause that allows it to widen the deficit.