Opinion View from the LEFT

It wants the Finance Commission to put UP in a special category,recommend special packages for eastern UP and Bundelkhand,ask the Centre to bear at least 50 per cent of the expenditure for implementation of the sixth pay commission and hand over of the Centre’s development schemes to the states along with the funds allocated for them.

It also says that the Finance Commission is constituted in a unilateral manner. “The Centre neither consults the states while constituting it nor gives them any representation in it. Proper representation of the Centre as well as the states requires that the states are consulted before its constitution and that the Inter-State Council endorses its formation,” it says.

The article also asks the Finance Commission to make the population of 2001 the basis for financial transfers from the present 1971. The population of 1971 does not reflect the changed requirements because of the changes in the demographic profile over the last four decades,it says.

Hollow promises

The lead editorial in the issue focuses attention on the prime minister’s address to the nation on the 63rd Independence Day. It says the speech was ‘customary’ and while all the right rhetoric was voiced,it inspired little confidence that these platitudes would be translated into action.

“The prime minister spent a great deal of time in describing the current drought situation that is stalking the country. However,what needs to be done to provide relief to the suffering people was not adequately articulated,” it says.

“Starvation deaths and farmer’s suicides continue to haunt rural India. This situation can be reversed only if concerted efforts are made to ensure that food reaches the needy through a universal public distribution system.”

“Not surprisingly,the major thrust of the prime minister’s address was to restore the country’s growth rate to 9 per cent which,he described as ‘the greatest challenge we face’. The current fall in the growth rate to 6.7 per cent has been ascribed solely to the global economic crisis.”

Commenting on the PM’s thrust on good education for all,it says “mere enactment of the Right to Education Act does not guarantee to reverse or improve this situation. Huge leaps in expenditures are required. If the current budget is any indication,this is not forthcoming.”

It also slams the government for not increasing the allocation for the health sector. “In 2004,when the UPA-1 government was formed,under Left’s pressure,the Common Minimum Programme promised to raise the levels of public health spending from 0.9 to at least 3 per cent of the GDP. Five years later,this continues to remain at the miserable level of 0.9 per cent.”

The editorial also questions the PM’s commitment to fight Maoists in the context of Lalgarh. While the PM said the central government will redouble its efforts to deal with Naxalite activities,the article asks him to “explain how he continues to tolerate members of his own cabinet aiding and abetting Maoist violence in Lalgarh and other parts of West Bengal.”

“The prime minister’s concerns,therefore,sound hollow apart from misleading,” it says.