Runaway prices

“Firstly, to ban futures/forward trading in the 24 essential commodities identified by the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices. Under pressure from the Left, the government has so far removed pulses, rice and wheat from the forwards market. However, unless all essential items, including edible oil, are prohibited from speculative trading, this price rise cannot be combated,” it says. Secondly, according to PD, the government’s decision to drastically cut the supply of foodgrain for the public distribution system (PDS) network to the states has further compounded the problem. It questions the government’s explanation in Parliament — that these reductions are because many states are not utilising the allocations made to them.

Price rise can only be arrested if the public distribution system is expanded to distribute all essential commodities. PD blames the UPA government for being bent on supplying foodgrain only for BPL categories. It claims that the government is aiming to eliminate the APL from the PDS system. “This would be disastrous,” it warns.

Criticising the US for mentioning Nandigram in its state department’s human rights report, PD says that the US “is busy with concoctions of ‘human rights abuses’ everywhere in the world except in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the Guantanamo Bay prison complex.”

It claims that “developmental work has started afresh after a year of the right-left horror when 29 CPM workers were butchered, when thousands were made homeless, and when even the imperialists’ definition of ‘human rights’ was grossly, systematically, wilfully violated — every day, every night, every week, every month. At Nandigram Block I, an NREGA project worth Rs 62 lakh has started. Job cards are distributed in every village, in every panchayat area. The rural poor are involved with the entire process.”

MNC friendly

Alleging that the Drugs and Cosmetics (Amendment) Bill, 2007 is an example of the central government’s attempt to encroach upon state governments’ rights, PD says that the bill actually aims at helping multinational companies to monopolise the drug market. “Proliferation of spurious or fake drugs is of serious concern. But the Bill neither contains any clause to check manufacturing and selling of spurious drugs, nor is there any deterrent clause providing stronger punishment for such acts. The Bill only...