Doctor146;s prescription wrong, says CPM

Holding that the Manmohan Singh Government8217;s prescription to protect India from the global financial crisis was wrong, the CPIM on Fr...

Holding that the Manmohan Singh Government8217;s prescription to protect India from the global financial crisis was wrong, the CPIM on Friday came out with a charter of suggestions, including demands for a special fiscal package, to increase public expenditure and a moratorium on job or wage cuts in the organised sector.

The party claimed that the paradigm of neo-liberal economic policies, propagated by the shenanigans of the capitalist order, had failed and said it was strange that when the vision of 8220;trickle down economics8221; was getting discredited across the world, the economic managers of the UPA Government were clinging to it.

In the charter, the CPIM sought a special fiscal package directed at increasing public expenditure to boost income and consumption of the working people to ensure broad-based growth, expanding of fiscal deficit by the Centre as well as states, scrapping of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act and putting in place a debt relief scheme for states to encourage them to adopt an expansionary fiscal stance.

According to senior CPIM leader Sitaram Yechury, the Manmohan Singh Government has once again made a wrong diagnosis of the genesis of the crisis and hence suggested a wrong prescription. 8220;The Government refuses to accept that the crisis reflects the bankruptcy of the ideology of neo-liberalism,8221; he added.

He said the world over leaders had admitted that it was time to restructure capitalism but in India, the Government was relying upon only one policy instrument 8212; the interest rate 8212; to control inflation as well as reverse the growth slowdown.

8220;Using one instrument for achieving two policy goals is illogical,8221; Yechury said.

The broad suggestions of the CPIM are: undertake massive public investment directed at sectors which are capable of creating employment demand, strengthen and extend NREGA to urban areas, extend the period of guaranteed employment beyond 100 days, encourage food grain production and expand public procurement operations for all major crops and step up investment in irrigation.

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It also mooted universalisation of the public distribution system, regulation of domestic corporate retailers to ensure that small and unorganised retailers are not hit, increasing customs duties to protect Indian industries and sector-specific relief packages to bail out small-scale industries.