Communists not against reforms, says Sitaram Yechury

WASHINGTON: Communists are not opposed to economic reforms per se but want to know what "reforms" mean to people at large, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury has said.

No one can be "anti-reform" but "it is important to define what reform really means because distributive justice and progress depends on that", he said at the Stanford Centre for International Development.

Yechury spoke on "India's Experience with Economic Reform" at the 12th annual conference on Indian Economic Policy Reform held at the centre.

"We are not spoilers of reforms. We just are arguing that reforms will have to considered in the ambit of the above discussed issues," he said.

The CPI-M leader said the Left in India needed to be given its due.

"If the global meltdown has not affected India so much, it was due to the stance taken by the Left," he said, an apparent reference to the times when the Communists propped Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"The Left had opposed full convertibility of Indian rupee, increasing FDI caps in insurance, privatisation of banks and pension funds. As a result, India was able to weather the meltdown."