Karnataka   

Nationalise cement, steel firms: CPI

BANTWAL: “The Government should take over cement and steel companies that are violating its directions,” the National Deputy Secretary of the Communist Party of India and Member of Parliament S. Sudhakar Reddy said on Sunday.

He expressed alarm over the way in which these companies are ‘openly’ violating the diktats of the Government, that is attempting to contain the inflationary trends in these sectors.

Mr. Reddy, who was in the State to campaign for the party’s candidates in the Assembly elections, stopped over in Bantwal on Sunday to bolster the campaign of the party’s candidate, Satish Kumar Bantwal.

Mr. Reddy reacted strongly to the comments made by the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice on global food shortage, which the US President George Bush reiterated soon after.

“It is irresponsible for a country, that is directing 18 per cent of its food stocks towards the manufacture of bio-fuels, to say that the food crisis has been caused by India and China,” he said.

Pointing out that the US is all set to double its food crop allocation towards bio-fuel manufacture, Mr. Reddy said that the people’s appetites have not grown; instead the food meant for their plates had been directed elsewhere. “To add to it, the US is also importing large quantities of food for bio-fuels and sucking up the world’s stocks,” he said.

Shifting closer to home, Mr. Reddy predicted an acute shortage of food in the country.

He felt that the reckless change in the land use pattern in the country is going to have disastrous effects. “Agricultural land is being doled out to private corporations in the name of industrialisation and Special Economic Zones,” he said.

Mr. Reddy also cast aspersions on the measures taken by the Reserve Bank of India to reduce the Cash Reserve Ratio of nationalised banks. He said that choking the circulation of funds in the market by reducing the liquidity of nationalised banks is not going to contain the affects of the galloping inflation.

Reiterating the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for the control of inflationary trends, Mr. Reddy also called for strengthening of the Public Distribution System and banning futures trading on essential commodities.

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