Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an utterly bizarre and bigoted claim that the Congress would redistribute the mangalsutras (gold chains) worn by Hindu women to Muslim “infiltrators” in the country. In actual practice, the Modi government’s policies have led to mangalsutras (a metaphor for family gold) being transferred under duress from the working class to the rich.
If truth be told, the transfer of mangalsutra has happened much more within the Hindu community, from regular wage earners to the wealthy. Indeed, this is proven by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data which shows a massive increase in people pledging family gold for current consumption, especially post Covid when their incomes got smashed. As per RBI data, loans against gold surged by nearly 60% from September 2020 to September 2021 – from Rs 40,080 crore to Rs 63,770 crore. This happened largely because the government as part of its stimulus did not put enough money in the hands of the ordinary working class. It focused on big credit concessions to businesses. The trend of higher loans against gold was taking place even earlier, but it really picked up steam after Covid when the economy saw a brutal K-shaped recovery, with the bottom 70% population seeing income stagnation. This is clearly reflected in the government’s PLFS (periodic labour force survey) data, which shows workers’ wages in the regular and casual category showing a real decline between 2017-18 and 2022-23.
It is not surprising that during this period, the loans against gold started rising to a point where the RBI started to express worry about higher household indebtedness and decline in their savings at a more structural level.
So to use Modi’s metaphor, the real “mangalsutra” transfer is clearly a result of structural policy changes and mishandling of events like demonetisation and the Covid epidemic.
Also read: ‘Growth in Real Wages Virtually Zero Under Modi Government’: Data
It is during this period that household debt peaked and inequality also soared to new heights. This period also saw stagnation in rural wages and consumption.
Some of these trends had begun to entrench themselves after demonetisation and a badly designed GST. We know GST is not a progressive tax and even today, high GST rates are taking their toll on the working class which contributes to 65% of the consumption tax.
It is apparent that stagnant incomes of the working class have led to a bigger surge in gold loans. So much so that the RBI recently raised a red flag and asked banks and NBFCs to closely monitor the loans taken against gold pledge, which has increased multifold in the last last seven to eight years. The RBI believes that the trend of increased household indebtedness and decline in savings (gold pledge triggers both) could affect future growth and consumption.
So Modi’s mangalsutra metaphor needs a serious inward look, rather than being used to target the Muslim minorities.
In Hindu practice, the mangalsutra holds great sentimental value, and its symbolic importance is often depicted in cinema when as a last resort, the woman’s mangalsutra is pledged to a money lender to save a piece of land or house from being seized by the money lender for non payment of loans. Modi needs to worry more about this eventuality.
Meanwhile, the election discourse has bizarrely shifted from Modi’s bigoted claim on mangalsutras to the merit or otherwise of inheritance tax or income redistribution. Modi scored a self goal by attacking the Congress on an inheritance tax, because his own government has actively considered this in the past.
Also read: Food Inflation Has Dogged Modi Government Since 2015
Debating redistribution of income is not something Modi would really want when he is desperately trying to shift attention to Hindutva in order to get more people to come out and vote in the remaining phases of polling. The BJP is clearly rattled by lower voting percentages and is even willing to play down it 400-paar rhetoric which may be inducing complacency among BJP voters.
The BJP, for the moment, seems trapped by Murphy’s law as its campaign is going horribly wrong and its chief campaigner looks tired and out of touch.
