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Tuesday, Jul 07, 2009
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Grossly inadequate, says Left

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Left parties on Monday described the Union budget 2009-10 as “grossly inadequate” in meeting the challenges of economic recession, growing job losses and declining purchasing power of the masses.

While the CPI(M) Polit Bureau said the budget would further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots, CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said there were no indicators in it to show how the government proposed to control the consumer price inflation and heavy job losses. “The budget also does not indicate how the agriculture sector is to be revamped. It is an unrealistic document,” he said.

In a statement, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau said the government had failed to provide the resources required to stimulate the economy. “The neglect of its role in terms of allocations is more significant in areas that touch on the lives of the mass of the people. Crucial sectors, like agriculture and rural development, where the effects of the prolonged agrarian crisis and the agricultural growth slowdown of 2008-09 have been severe, have been provided little support in terms of Plan outlays.”

It said the required lowering of interest rates to 4 per cent on farm loans had not been done and instead only an incentive to repay loans on time had been announced.

The Polit Bureau found the allocation for social security schemes for unorganised sector workers at only Rs. 100 crore inadequate. While the Polit Bureau welcomed the minimum wage hike for the NREGA scheme to Rs. 100, it said a meaningful expansion of the scheme would have required a much larger allocation than the Rs. 2,350-crore increase over what was spent in 2008-09.

The All India Forward Bloc said the budget aimed at large scale disinvestment of profit-making public sector undertakings to meet the fiscal deficit.

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