Left wants govt to go rural

NEW DELHI: Rural India has got a raw deal under the Manmohan Singh government, says the Left’s assessment of the UPA. Painting a grim picture of the agrarian and rural scenario, the Left parties have demanded a policy and strategy correction based on enhanced state intervention and support in the sector.

The Left’s detailed note on two years of UPA rule, released hours before the UPA-Left coordination committee meeting, sought public investment in agriculture and rural areas at a “much bigger” scale. Accusing the government of pursuing an agenda to further expose the “crisis ridden” agriculture to the international market and dominance by MNCs, it said this would be unacceptable to the Left.

“It is necessary for the UPA government to politically determine the course of action to be pursued in the coming days. After a two-year passage of the UPA government, the people are yet to realise that their material conditions are changing for the better.

Price rise, agrarian crisis, unemployment, lack of access to education, health and basic services are problems which need urgent attention,” the nine-page note said.

Re-echoing its earlier grouses on economic, foreign and social policy matters, the Left has also expressed concern that the coordination committee has become “merely a forum for talking out issues without producing concrete results”.

Barring a few instances, it said the discussion on these issues have not led to satisfactory conclusions. However, the Left Parties refrained from making even a veiled threat of destabilising the government.

The Left has divided the government’s policies into three categories — positive steps, moves in the right direction but made half-heartedly and actions against the spirit of the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) which need to be “reversed and corrected”. In the note, most of the issues fall in the last category.

Pointing out that the central plan outlay on agriculture and allied activities, rural development, irrigation and flood control and social services together stood at Rs 74,312 crore in ’05-06, less than 2.5% of the GDP, the Left recalled that it had demanded an increase of at least Rs 50,000 crore.

The central plan outlay was raised by Rs 15,000 crore in the Budget for ’06-07. The Left asked the government to consider its suggestions for resource mobilisation to raise funds to fulfill NCMP promises.

“Far from reinvigorating the role of the state in order to step up investment and support to agriculture and provide protection against price fluctuations, underlying the frequent calls for a second green revolution, emanating from the government is a vision of corporate driven export-led agriculture,” the Left Parties said.

Opposing the seeds bill, the note alleged that it sought to subvert the seed rights of the farmers and facilitate monopolisation of seed business in the hands of MNCs. The Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Research and Education also came under attack from the Left.

In the “way forward” for the government suggested in the note, the Left has demanded implementation of the recommendations of the National Commission for Farmers, including setting up of a price stabilisation fund and lowering interest rates on farmers’ loans. It has also sought strengthening of the PDS and doing away with fixing quotas for states for issuing BPL cards.

The Left has asked the government to prevent any further price rise of food and essential commodities and revise the consumer price index to better reflect the prices of essential commodities. It also demanded increasing coverage under the Rural Employment Guarantee Act on an annual basis so that the entire country is covered in the next three years.