The Hindu : Left parties flay Government policies

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Left parties flay Government policies

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, MARCH 15. Speakers from the Communist parties lambasted the privatisation policy of the TDP and the NDA Governments and called on public sector employees to vote out the present regime.

Speaking at a meeting on `Future of Public Sector Enterprises,' organised by the A.P. Public Sector Employees Federation, the CPI state secretary, Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy, said that the disinvestment of public sector enterprises was nothing but a loot of national resources built with the blood and sweat of India's toiling masses. He said that the policies of privatisation and globalisation were being dictated to the Government by the World Bank, IMF and WTO. He listed the privatisation of Road Transport Corporations, Electricity Boards, Hospitals and other public services and said that these had a devastating effect on the people.

The CPI (M) leader, M.A. Gafoor, said that the World Bank had fixed a timetable for privatising public sector units in the State and the TDP Government was meekly following this. He blamed the earlier Congress regime of former Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and the former Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh, for putting India on this path of privatisation and globalisation. He appealed to the Congress to review these policies in the light of their negative consequences experienced over the last decade. Earlier, the senior Congress leader, A. Chakrapani, reiterated his party's support for public sector undertakings and a welfare state. He said that the Congress feels that education, health and other essential sectors should remain the Government responsibility and that the best policy is a mixed economy. He said that the earlier Congress Government initiated economic reforms only to meet the necessities of that time and make the economy more competitive but the Congress had never supported retrenchment of workers or privatisation of profitable public sector undertakings.

M. Janardhan Reddy, chairman and Md. A. Rahman Khan, general secretary of the federation also spoke.

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