Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat on Tuesday alleged that the United Progressive Alliance government miserably failed to check skyrocketing prices of food articles and other essential commodities during the first year of its stay in power because of wrong economic policies, including allowing futures (forward) trading in essential commodities.
Addressing party workers here, Mr. Karat said the income of 90 per cent of the country's population was getting drastically reduced because of these wrong policies of the UPA II government, while benefits of such policies reached only 10 per cent.
He pointed out that the Arjun Sengupta Commission report brought to light that 77 per cent of the country's population could not spend more than Rs.20 a day.
Alleging that Congress-led government's economic policies were reflective of class policies of the ruling party, Mr. Karat said that the recent budget imposed a heavy tax burden of Rs.40,000 crore on the common people but gave exemption of a whopping Rs. 80,000 crore to big companies and the corporate sector. Besides, there was cut in food subsidy to the tune of Rs.300 crore, he added.
He pointed out that while each BPL family was entitled to 35 kg of rice a month under prevailing public distribution system the Congress-led government proposed to reduce the quantity to 25 kg a month in the draft legislation on food security.
Neglect of north-east
Addressing the meeting, Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said that because of transport bottleneck the price hike was much more in the north-eastern States compared to other parts of the country.
Highlighting the poor road, railway and air connectivity and telecommunication in north-eastern States, in sharp contrast to the rapid development in communication in other parts of the country, Mr. Sarkar said that under development and backwardness of the north-east region had given rise to the problem of insurgency.
He expressed resentment that even after six decades of country's Independence transport and communication systems in the north-east were in a sorry state. He pointed out that Agartala was connected by rail only a year back through the meter gauge when it had become obsolete elsewhere in the country.
Both Mr. Karat and Mr. Sarkar, however, said that there was no difference between the economic policies of the Congress-led UPA government and the earlier Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government and called for uniting the non-Congress and non-BJP forces to carry forward the struggle against price rises and for mounting pressure on the government to formulate alternative pro-people policies.
