It is no secret that price rise is a potent political issue and will play a part in the assembly polls this year. The CPM recognises this, saying that the price rise factor will have an “adverse effect on the fortunes of the Congress party” in the Punjab and Uttarakhand elections. The lead editorial in the latest issue of People’s Democracy charts out a long list of what the government should do. Its suggestions: Bring down fuel prices to pre-June 2006 levels and revise the ad valorem duty structure on petroleum products, crack down on hoarding, address ‘supply’ constraints, and revise agricultural policy with emphasis on food security and the public distribution system. “A major reason for the rising prices is the UPA government’s refusal to reverse the steps taken by the BJP-led government in 2003 to lift all restrictions on futures trading in agricultural commodities,” the editorial says. The party refers to what it believes are the changing positions of the government to explain price rise — that it was seasonal, that inflation was a natural consequence of rapid economic growth and, more recently, that there were supply constraints. Contending that the UPA’s incorrect policies were responsible for price rise, the editorial says even though China had registered rapid growth for three decades, inflation was below 2 per cent.

Buddha’s word

After telling party cadres that the success of the state’s plans for industrialisation would depend on the manner in which people were persuaded to believe in them, the CPM is now systematically pursuing this line. This is evident from a report on West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s recent rally at Khejuri near Nandigram. “Pointing at Haldia as a flagship example of economic turnaround, Buddhadeb narrated briefly how a fishing village grew to house more than a hundred large factories and employ 40,000 people. Would Nandigram, this side of the murmuring Haldi River, remain in the backwater of economy?” the report says. The chief minister was careful to say that agriculture would not be sacrificed for industrial growth, but pursued alongwith his focus on industrialisation: that the pressure on land from increasing population has made it difficult for families to survive on land alone, while education saw the young seeking employment opportunities elsewhere. “Would we turn our faces away from the will of the young and force them to remain cultivators?” the West Bengal chief minister is quoted as asking.

Courting trouble

The Kerala High Court verdict on self-financing colleges in the state has elicited a long response in People’s Democracy from AIFUCTO president Thomas Joseph, who starts by saying the court had “taken away the authority of the state to provide for a centralised single window admission,” determine fee structure and provide reservation, and “freeship to 50 per cent of the admitted students on merit cum means basis”. He also says that by striking down section 7 of the Kerala Professional Colleges Act, the high court had “struck down the educational aspirations of the poor and their prospects for a better life”. According to him, the verdict had “little appreciation for the social philosophy of taxation and its implications on public finance and public welfare. This is not an apolitical view... it is a neoliberal, capitalist view. It is opposed to the socialist ethos of our constitution.”

Compiled by Ananda Majumdar

editor@expressindia.com