Vintage illogic

The Left takes the nation for a rideAtilde;?AS expected, the United Front steering committee has managed to meet for hours without transac...

The Left takes the nation for a rideAtilde;?AS expected, the United Front steering committee has managed to meet for hours without transacting any business whatsoever. It has managed to avoid taking a decision on the most important item on the national agenda: how to bridge the oil pool deficit. By allowing the Left to postpone the decision by 15 days, it has managed to add Rs 450 crore to an already unmanageable deficit, which is growing at the rate of Rs 30 crore per day.

And out of all the solutions to the crisis that it has offered, only one is of any value: that the money from the Oil Pool Account that was deposited in the Public Account of the Government should be returned. It does not take enormous intelligence to realise that it would help the cash-strapped oil companies get down to prospecting again. But that is a solution for the future. Explorations that begin now cannot be expected to bear fruit within this financial year, at the end of which the deficit will stand at a staggering Rs 24,500 crore. All that the Left has to offer for the present is a cess on luxury cars, and a cursory examination of the figures will reveal that CPIM Politburo member Sitaram Yechuri has not been doing his homework very well.

The automobile industry did very well last year, selling more than 4 lakh units. But 2.34 lakh of these happened to be Maruti 800s and vans, which cannot be taxed by any logic as they are the common man8217;s vehicle. The rest included Ambassadors and Fiats, which again cannot be taxed because the taximen ply them. Finally, the Government would be left with less than a lakh of vehicles to tax in any given year.

The nine-month sales figures ending January this year tell the same story. For instance, in that period, 5647 Opel Astras costing Rs 7.7 lakh and 1626 Peugeot 309s Rs 6.6 lakh were sold. Assuming a draconian 100 per cent cess which no market will tolerate, Astras and 309s would yield Rs 54 crore for the oil pool deficit in nine months. In other words, their sales would cover less than two days8217; worth of growth in the deficit. In that same nine-month period, the deficit would have leapt ahead by Rs 8,100 crore.

Indians would have to buy 1.05 lakh Astras to cover that. India is witness to one of the turning points of history. Never before has any Left party, anywhere in the world, urged the proletariat to shop till they drop. The irony is that the Left probably has no suspicion of the absurdity of its suggestions.

Only dimly aware that the world now has a new political map, it is stuck fast in the glory days in old Calcutta, when the city went to the barricades if tram fares rose by a single paisa. When it was good politics to take indiscriminately from the rich and give to the poor or at least to those individual specimens of the poor who were on the Left8217;s side.

Today, it is using the discredited, shopworn political rhetoric of those times to sap the Government8217;s will to face up to its biggest challenge, on which the future progress of the whole economy depends. While guarding its political interests, not only is it doing a great disservice to the people whom it claims to represent, but it is also exposing its complete inability to deal with real life.