Kerala   

Chief Minister comes out against neo-liberal policies

NEW DELHI: Chief Minister V. S. Achuthanandan on Tuesday used the platform provided by the Fourth International Conference on Federalism to speak out against neo-liberal policies which strain the “fragile structures that federal polities invariably are”.

He was addressing a session dedicated to ‘How Do Federations Reconcile Overall Economic Stability with State Autonomy?’

According to the Chief Minister, neo-liberal policies – by violating the premises of the federal arrangement opted by the framers of the Constitution - negate its rationale; “indeed, turn this arrangement into its very opposite”.

This he said with reference to the Central government’s decision to open the economy, including peasant agriculture, to world prices.

Stating that there was nothing wrong in the Centre being entrusted with trade, tariff and exchange rate policies in the past when the entire objective of its economic policy was to protect the economy, Mr. Achuthanandan said in the changed scenario, this constitutional agreement put the State governments on a collision course with the Union government as the former was directly answerable to the peasantry.

Conceding the acrimony that always existed in Centre-State relations on the issue of resource sharing – “with the States demanding larger magnitudes of transfers and lesser discretion for the Centre with regard to such transfers” - the Chief Minister said this had been overtaken by a profound shift in the situation because of the pursuit of neo-liberal policies.

“This shift is fraught with serious consequences.”

He spoke out against the manner in which the Centre forced the State governments into accepting neo-liberal policies through conditionalities attached to various Centrally sponsored schemes.

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