What did he mean? Is he suggesting that India curb its attempts to become a developed country because a rich, powerful India might harm China’s economic interests? If he is suggesting that, then much of what the Marxists have been up to in the past three years becomes as clear as clear can be.

They have used their power over this government to stop all the things that would have benefited India. China’s economic reforms, which began in the early 1980s under Deng Xiao Ping, became a model that we in India tried to follow. The Marxists know this well and often do in West Bengal what they oppose at the Centre. But so abject has Dr Manmohan Singh’s government been in its submission to Marxist will that there was not a murmur of protest till the nuclear deal.

Tragic, if you consider what could have happened under a prime minister who is credited with having started the process of reforming India’s economy. Even more tragic, if you consider that he works with a finance minister who is a dedicated reformer. In a recent lecture Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said, “For three decades after Independence, India adopted a dirigiste model of economic development. In those years, India’s GDP grew at an average rate of 3.5 per cent. I call those years the lost decades.”

It is the policies of those lost decades that the Marxists would have us return to. To this end they have forced the government to abandon all attempts at economic reform. With privatisation and labour reform, they have ideological problems, but interestingly they have done nothing to improve public education and healthcare. Surely it is “anti-people” to continue to have public healthcare and schools of such appalling quality?

... contd.