 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we have Thomas Franco with us. Franco is the former general secretary of AIBOC and joint convener of People First. He is here to talk about the recent announcements of the finance minister. We know that the finance minister told the media that she is announcing a package to boost demand. Can you please tell us what is this package? First of all, I would like to say that the finance minister either she is not having any clue of what is to be done for the economy or she is thinking that she can fool around people forever. Initially, she had given the Tartman and War package where they said that 20 lakh crore is being pumped in, where in fact it was just 2.6 lakh crores, which was the government spending and the rest was just announcement of banks loans to be given. Banks have such given more than that every year. So it was not a package at all to boost the economy that time. Now she is announcing a package again saying that this will boost the economy, where she is saying that she is permitting the government employees to have rupees, 10,000 rupees as festival advance and also allow an LTC voucher, leave travel construction voucher, which they can encash with a lot of conditions which I will come to later. In addition, she has announced that she will be giving certain loans to few states at zero interest rate and also 25,000 crores will be the additional capital expenditure by the government this year for roads and water supply and other expenditure. This is absolutely not going to create any like to boost the economy. So that is the unfortunate thing I find with this announcement of the finance. Could you please tell us what impact will this have on the masses and the employees? Number one, the finance minister is opening a Pandora's box. Unnecessarily she is making people unhappy because the larger masses of the country, she and the Prime Minister keep saying that we are helping 80 crore people with relations and all. So this is the larger majority and this larger majority is feeling that we are struggling so much. They are just giving 10 kg of wheat or rice, which is not sufficient, but they are giving money to the government employees who are already in it. The economists and the people's movements were asking that give 7,500 rupees per month to these poor families for their survival. Instead, she is announcing just a package for government employees, a limited number of them. That is not going to help the masses and masses are very, very unhappy with this announcement. On the other hand, if you look at the government employees, they are also unhappy. See, this leave encasement or the festival advance were available to the central government employees, public sector employees, bank employees for years together. But for the central government employees, after the last 7th pay commission, they withdrew many of the advances except the housing advance. One of that is this festival advance. The demand of the government employees that you give festival advance is equivalent to our basic pay. That is what we get in the banking sector. So an officer in central government employee, his minimum basic is 56,100. You are giving him just 10,000 rupees as the festival advance. That too with so many conditions that will be given as a rupee card and you have to spend it in the shops where you will be paying taxes on that. So that way they are unhappy. Secondly, the leave travel concession. Already that provision has been there. That once in 4 years you can travel anywhere in India within your eligible class and if you don't want to travel, you can encash that amount. Now here now they are announcing that you can encash with a condition that you have to spend 3 times of your eligibility. So suppose you are eligible for 33,000, you have to spend one lakh and that one lakh has to be used for purchasing commodities or you have to spend in hotels where you will be spending it with a minimum GST of 12%. That is an additional expenditure for the person. See in what way it is going to help. It's not going to boost the limit. People are not going to spend like that. People are already worried. They are trying to keep whatever little savings they have safely with them because they don't know what is the future. Nobody is able to predict. Right. So how is the reaction of the employees? What are the demanding? What are the main demands? See the employees as I told you have opened the Pandora's bar for quite some time they were keeping quiet because the situation in the country is not good but now once she announced this they have come up with all their demands which were pending. The first demand is that they removed these dearness allowance. After 24th March they have withdrawn the dearness allowance which is a compensation paid for price rights. They rightly point out Shukubal Mishradha who is the convener of the joint movement of the Central Government employees and also the general secretary of the All India Railway Months Federation. He has written a letter where he says that dearness is neither gratis nor bounty. It is only a compensation for the price rights which you cannot stop. You have stopped. That is a loss of 37,500 crores for the Central Government employees alone. Leave alone the pensioners. They are also affected. Give us back that is one demand. Secondly they have been fighting against this new pension scheme which we call no pension scheme because there is no assured pension in that scheme. So they have opened that demand again. Again there are so many issues which were agreed upon in a talk with the Central Government employees. In 2016 itself that they have not implemented. They are asking to implement that. They are also asking for certain quarantine leave for those who are getting affected with the Covid. And there are many more. There are 16 demands in that and probably they will be also joining the November 26th strike along with the Central Union because this government is not at all bothered about either the employees or the people of the country. You were speaking about the impact on the state finances earlier. Could you tell us more about it? How is this going to impact the state's finances? See the government of India it is not spending anything much more than what is announced in the budget. But it is the state governments which are taking care of the people. Let it be the transport, let it be the food supply, let it be the ration shops or the basic amenities made available to the people. All that is taken care of by the state government. They are in a last strike. Their expenditures are going up. They don't have money. Central Government unfortunately is not giving what is due to them under the GST which is guaranteed by the constitution as per the amendment made. But that is not being paid. Instead the Central Government is saying that you borrow from the market. If a state government is borrowing from the market they are paying an interest of 9%, 10%, 11%. What if the Finance Minister of Kerala Dr. Thomas Isaac had been demanding is that you at least permit us to take loans at the rapport rate. The rapport rate is the rate in which the Reserve Bank of India lends to the bank. The same rate you give it to us. We are not going to lend it further like the banks are doing. We are going to spend it for the people of the state. That this government is not permitting even now. Of course for few states like Northeast they have announced some interest pre-loan but that is too little. What is needed for the state government is more amounts from the Central Government including the GST due plus permission to avail loans at a cheaper rate of 4% which is the rapport rate. So finally what is going to be the impact of this or capital expenditure? The capital expenditure she has announced that she is going to increase the expenditure by 25,000 crores more than what was announced in the budget. In fact if you look at the budget estimates, revised estimates and the actual always the expenditure of capital expenditure goes up for various reasons. So this 25,000 crores is fit and this is not going to create any impact at all. So what I once again reiterate is that this finance minister and the government has to wake up. They have to listen to the economists of this country, the good economists who have suggested many good alternatives. The people's movements, the political parties, everybody has to be taken into account. Their opinion has to be taken. They cannot keep a blind eye. And they cannot think that they can keep on pooling the larger number of people for long. You can pool people for a short while but you cannot pool them forever. So they have to wake up this high time the finance minister and the prime minister wake up. Thank you. Thank you so much for being with us here today. Thank you so much.