The Hindu : New Delhi News : CPI(M) hits back at Chidambaram

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Tuesday, Mar 25, 2008
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CPI(M) hits back at Chidambaram

New Delhi: Stung by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s veiled criticism of the Left parties attack on UPA government’s economic policies, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Sunday hit back saying his “neo-liberal” economic agenda “has intensified inequalities.”

“The Finance Minister should work more closely on the lines of the Common Minimum Programme than... his own economic agenda,” CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat told news channel Times Now.

Mr. Chidambaram had said in Madurai on Saturday that “some 60 members of Parliament” criticised everything being done by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and him to improve the economy and argued that those who claim that growth only helped the rich are the “worst enemies of the poor.”

“The pattern of growth in the neo-liberal framework promoted by Mr. Chidambaram and some of his colleagues has clearly intensified inequalities in India,” Ms. Karat, who is also a Rajya Sabha member alleged.

Misleading

Echoing the same sentiments, senior party Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury said that growth must accrue to the vast majority of India’s population. “I think this is a very wrong contention and I think this is deliberately misleading the general opinion. The benefit of growth must accrue to the vast majority of the Indians who somehow seem to be excluded from growth process,” he said. — PTI

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