NEW DELHI, January 22: Deferring to the Left, the United Front manifesto will skirt ``contentious'' issues like privatisation of the insurance and banking sectors.A senior Left leader said on Wednesday that the UF manifesto, slated for release on January 30, did not contain anything which went against the position which the Left combine in the Front had taken on such issues.
The manifesto is also expected to mention, specifically, the UF Government's attempts to revive certain sick public sector units -- which happens to be a key concern of the Left Front and figures in its own manifesto.
While releasing their own joint manifesto, the CPI, CPI(M), RSP and Forward Bloc made clear that they differed with other constituents of the UF on economic policy.
Unimpressed with the liberalisation policy pursued since 1991, the Left in its manifesto maintained that the policy had benefitted only 10 per cent of the people at the expense of 90 per cent of the population.
And it insisted that efforts to
``stampede India into opening up the financial sector to suit the interest of international finance capital'' had to be resisted.
Stating that the ``trend of privatising the banking sector should be halted,'' the Left said it wanted banks to ``restore social priorities.''Since the Left and its partners in the UF differ on these issues, the UF joint manifesto will simply skip mentioning them.
The leader also said that this was expected since a joint manifesto needed to indicate the common areas of agreement and the general direction of the Front's policies.And a manifesto need not be as specific as a Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of action which a coalition government may need to adopt on coming into power, Left leaders said.
The Communist parties are reconciled to the fact that the UF will not completely follow the Left agenda, but an increased Left representation in the coalition will put pressure on the government to adopt more ``pro-people'' economic policies. And a stronger Left would want a
revised CMP -- if the UF actually comes to form a government -- to reflect their concerns.
Many UF constituents were happy to confine themselves to a common ``appeal'' to the voters before the election. Left leaders like Jyoti Basu, however, were keen that the document should be called a ``manifesto'': Basu even referred those who disagreed to the dictionary to convince them that a pre-election appeal and manifesto amounted to the same thing.
A few eyebrows were raised when the Left's joint manifesto did not include an ``expected'' mention of unemployment allowances at the national level. Left leaders, however, maintained that too much was being read into the omission.
The idea has not been given up, and the manifesto simply skips details, they argue. The manifesto, they say, does mention the Left's desire to list right to work as a fundamental right: this implies redressal if the government fails on this count.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
