The Hindu : Yechury for expansion of domestic market

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 16, 2002

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National

Yechury for expansion of domestic market

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUPATI OCT. 15. The CPI(M) politburo member, Sitaram Yechury, has called for expansion of the domestic market — pumping in of state investment into vital sectors — to tide over the complications created by liberalisation. He suggested the widening of the tax net and the recovery of bad loans standing at Rs. 2.50 lakh crores from corporate giants to generate funds to meet the situation.

Taking part, as a former member, in the debate organised by the Students Federation of India at the Sri Venkateswara University here today, Mr. Yechury spoke extensively on the ill-effects of liberalisation, the threat to secularism and his party's stand on current issues.

Admitting that it may not be wise to abort the liberalisation process, thanks to the unusual speed with which the Centre and some "hi-tech States" were acting, he said that much damage had already been done in the last decade, with the country's outstanding liabilities standing at two-thirds of the GDP. The country was on the brink of an internal and external debt trap. He wondered how the Prime Minister, A.B. Vajpayee, could expect an eight per cent growth rate when the employment generation had come down so drastically that the growth in the employment rate in the organised sector had touched the negative. The foodgrain production-population growth mismatch had resulted in a serious threat to food security. State spending on social sectors had declined.

Mr. Yechury attributed the poor state of affairs to the attempt to "re-colonise" the Third World countries by the developed ones using the three "dreaded" weapons in their arsenal — the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and the World Bank — the "International trimurtis".

Condemning the party's detractors who make it a point to call the Indian communists as indulging in "tall talk" by pointing to the opening up of the economy by communist China, he said the Chinese Government was still the major infrastructure builder in the social sector, unlike in India, where the Government was abdicating its social responsibility.

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