Whose comrades are they anyway?

To my surprise the person I addressed the question to said, 8220;Yes, unfortunately, it is. This has been happening for a few years now because of exports to China. Eighty-five percent of the iron ore from here is being exported to China and the mining lobby is so powerful that we can do nothing about it.8221;

When I returned to Delhi I made further inquiries and discovered that we are dealing with a Chinese East India Company situation. We are depriving our own steel industry to export valuable raw material to China.

Our former foe then exports back to us finished steel goods, so if you are shopping for cutlery in the bazaars of Delhi and Mumbai you are more than likely to be buying Chinese knives and forks.

This is not good. But, have you noticed that there is not a word on this from our comrades in the Communist Party of India Marxist.

Comrades Karat and Yechury are very vocal about 8220;protecting8221; India8217;s interests when it comes to the supposedly evil designs of the capitalist West, but when it comes to China they are happy to allow shameless pillage of our natural resources.

Their only intervention in our commerce with China has been to insist that Chinese companies be given preference in building India8217;s infrastructure. Only when it was pointed out that the Chinese were also building ports in Pakistan and this made the situation tricky did they desist from open lobbying for Chinese multinationals. Whose comrades are they?

The more important question is whether our process of economic liberalisation is not going awry. As one of the leading proponents of reducing the state8217;s role in business and the bazaar I hesitate to suggest intervention or regulation of any kind, but find myself in the strange position of having to do so.

Liberalisation cannot mean looting our natural resources to feed another country8217;s industry. This is old-fashioned colonisation, not economic reform.

Why is our supposedly leftist government allowing this to happen? Would someone in Dr. Manmohan Singh8217;s government like to explain or do we need to exercise our right to information?

If one of you feels strongly enough to do this please also ask about granite exports. I hear there is more looting of natural resources going on here. Somebody up there somewhere is making a lot of money.

Meanwhile, we have the worst of leftist economics. While Comrades Karat and Yechury ignore our government8217;s willing submission to the Chinese East India Company, they force Sonia Gandhi to spend thousands of crores of rupees on well meaning but unworkable schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

Jean Dreze, one of the architects of the scheme, admitted as reported in this newspaper last week that where they had hoped to provide 200,000 lakh man-days of work they had succeeded only in providing 3,663 lakh.

This is less than two percent of the employment the scheme hoped to guarantee but its reach is being doubled from 200 districts to 400. Thousands more crore rupees of taxpayers money down the drain.

The other dangerous scheme that this government8217;s Marxist allies are forcing through is the tribal land rights bill that will distribute what is left of our forests among Adivasis, who will undoubtedly be forced by poverty or the lure of filthy lucre to hand it over to the timber mafias.

I hear from reliable sources in the corridors of power that the comrades are determined to push the tribal land rights law through.

There is method in what they are doing. They are admirers of the Chinese way so they have no problem subverting India8217;s interests to those of China.

And, on the domestic front their stated aim is to expand their base beyond the states of West Bengal and Kerela. Politburo thinkers appear to believe that the easiest way to do this is to lure the Congress party8217;s former vote banks: Dalits and Adivasis.

Not a bad strategy. What is less clear is why the Congress is allowing itself to be eaten alive.