Jobless reforms
Days after the prime minister renewed his governments commitment to second-generation reforms,the CPM has argued that the general job situation in the country has worsened since economic reforms began.
Patnaik identifies three issues of most concern the increasing levels of unemployment as high GDP growth fails to translate into jobs,the high rate of inflation in the price of basic necessities and the attempt to take over lands and resources by corporate entities in rural areas.
Whose parivartan?
The editorial in the CPIs New Age slams the UPA over Anna Hazares arrest,saying its blunder prompted thousands to protest the attempt to curb the rights of dissent,if not for the Jan Lokpal. It says that the government was at fault right from the beginning,when,after Jantar Mantar,it bowed to the extent that it forgot the constitutional niceties and constituted a ten-member joint committee with five ministers and five nominated by an individual to draft a bill for Lokpal institution.
In the process,it not only ignored the other sections of public opinion (wrongly termed as civil society) but even failed to take the parliamentary opposition into confidence. Such unilateral action and calculated mischief was bound to be doomed. And it happened. Even after that the government did not take corrective measures for facilitating a real nation-wide debate on effective Lokpal Bill, it adds.
The result,it says,is the current confusion. Creating the Lokpal was not enough,says the editorial,and adds that even Hazare has said that the Jan Lokpal bill that his team is espousing will eradicate corruption by 60 per cent at best. Hence he talked about parivartan (change). That is the crux of the matter. Parivartan cannot be confined to change of one set of bourgeois politicians with the other including the so-called civil society that is very much the part of the bourgeois polity itself, it says.
Compiled by Manoj C.G.
