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Beware of MNCs, cautions Babulal Gaur

By Our Staff Correspondent

BHOPAL, NOV. 9. The Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Babulal Gaur, said today that capitalism was bound to harm the country and cautioned against attempts by multinational companies, especially those operating from the United States, to monopolise or capture the entire market.

Mr. Gaur was speaking as chief guest at the end of a day-long workshop organised here on the need to increase crop productivity with special emphasis on soyabean. Today's workshop was organised under the banner of ITC e-Chaupal. The e-Chaupal project is being implemented by ITC Limited in Madhya Pradesh.

Under this project 1750 villages in the State have so far been connected directly with ITC run mandis and one-stop shopping malls where the farmers can sell their produce as well as purchase all their requirements from clothes to tractors. Mr. Gaur said the nation is bound to prosper if we can ensure the prosperity of farmers. He said with globalisation of economy, even the agriculture market has now become international.

While the Chief Minister praised ITCs initiative in the rural areas, there was also a word of caution from his side. He said there should be competition and the corporate houses should not think in terms of driving away all competition and capturing the market. He said the small traders have already started expressing fear about their livelihood. He drew attention to ITC's rural shopping malls and told the organisers of the workshop: "If you start selling everything what will happen to the rest of the market?" Mr. Gaur said the e-Chaupal project would bring the mandi closer to the farmers and this would reduce the cost of transporting the farm produce to the market. This would eventually help in reducing the cost of production. It is important that we increase production and lower the production cost, he asserted. The organizers emphasised that to face global competition, soyabean productivity will have to be increased and effective techniques need to be employed to reduce the production cost.

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Beware of MNCs, cautions Babulal Gaur

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