Days after the Prime Minister’s statement that he hoped to find ways and means to work with the Left even though he disagreed with them on economic issues, CPI(M) top boss Prakash Karat on Thursday spelt it out clearly that both the sides were ideologically poles apart.
Karat’s arguments, peppered with sarcasm and ridicule, were also precisely on economic issues. Without mincing words, the hardline Marxist said Singh and his UPA Government were stuck to the ideological dogma of neo-liberal economic policies.
At a function here, he rejected the olive branch extended by the Prime Minister and took him head on for his comments that the UPA Government had strengthened banking and insurance systems and India was able to meet the global financial crisis because of these steps.
“The Prime Minister has made some important pronouncements when he was on a plane while returning from Japan. Our Prime Minister makes such important pronouncements on board planes,” he said in an unusually mocking manner.
Recounting his experience in engaging the Government over the last few years, he said the Left parties had spent hours together with the Prime Minister and Finance Minister arguing that the Government should not go for financial sector liberalisation.
“After spending hours together, they used to say that you have taken an ideological position. It is in fact they who are stuck to the ideological dogma of neo-liberal policies,” he said.
“My hair turned grey, arguing with Chidambaram,” Karat added sarcastically noting that the Left and the Government exchanged at least 20 letters on crucial economic issues in the last four years.
Replying to the Prime Minister’s statement, he said the Government wanted to increase the FDI cap in insurance and banking sectors all these years, but could not do it because of the Left opposition. “We even cited the case of AIG itself which was under scrutiny for bad accounting practice. We told them what is the need for bringing in such companies here,” he said.
“The Finance Minister was arguing that we have to capitalise weak banks and allow foreign banks to come and take them over. Had it happened at that time, all our banks would have collapsed now,” he said.
“How the Government has strengthened the banking and insurance sectors I am unable to understand,” he said. Referring to the losses suffered by big companies in the wake of the stock market collapse, he said, “The Government is working to ensure that all the fat cats do not suffer.”
In scathing criticism of the Government’s economic policies, he said the effect of the financial meltdown would be felt soon. “This is going to lead to the loss of lakhs and lakhs of jobs ,” he added.
He said the Left would continue to struggle against the neo-liberal economic policies and raise its voice against compromising and eroding of national sovereignty by foreign and economic policies in place in the last one-and-a- half decades. Not forgetting to attack the Government’s foreign policy on which the Left parted company with the UPA, he said the Prime Minister and the Government had hitched India with the US at a time when Washington’s political and economic hegemony was waning.