Opposing the FDI in multi-brand retail and other reforms in the insurance and pension funds, the CPI(M) will try to work jointly with regional parties and introduce a resolution in Parliament seeking to express the will of people, party Polit Bureau member and president All-India Kisan Sabha S. Ramachandran Pillai has said.
Mr. Pillai told reporters here on Tuesday that the Left parties were not visualising a Third Front, but would try to rally people with alternative set of economic policies to oppose the “neo-liberal” polices followed by the Congress-UPA and the BJP.
He said two decades of liberalised economic policies had led to economic slowdown, low industrial output, slide in the agriculture sector, and spiralling prices.
FDI would hit food security and corporates would decide what crops should be sown. The cash transfer scheme would also be opposed, as it was aimed at dismantling the public distribution system, he said.
Corruption
On the other hand, corruption had hit both the major parties, and even the Prime Minister’s Office was allegedly tainted with the Coalgate.
Mr. Pillai said the total amount of money involved in corruption at the Central level was Rs. 6.25 lakh crore, about 90 per cent of the revenue of the government in a year. “My party would try to work jointly with regional parties on the issues concerning people inside and outside Parliament,” he said.
The AIKS president, who is here to participate in a national fisheries convention, said agriculture had become unviable following rising cost of inputs.
Earlier, the price of chemical fertilizer was kept fixed and the subsidy varied. “Now, the subsidy is fixed and price varied,” he said. Besides shrinkage of institutional credit facility, reliance on moneylenders and crop price not increasing proportionately hit the agriculture sector, he pointed out.
The agricultural prospects had become unpredictable and no particular part of the country was doing well, he said, adding several variables decided the crop outcome.
Mr. Pillai demanded that the Central and State governments rise to the occasion and come to the rescue of those hit by cyclone ‘Nilam’.
CPI(M) district and city secretaries respectively Ch. Narsinga Rao and B. Ganga Rao were present.
