CPI(M) attacks Cong for defending govt's 'neo-liberal' reforms

Referring to the speeches made by top Congress leaders at the rally here yesterday, senior party leader Sitaram Yechury said, "All of them were marked by a chilling lack of any remorse at the growing burdens being imposed on the vast mass of our people by this government.

"The simple fact is that at the expense of the vast majority of our people, the country's resources and markets are being further opened up for loot and profit maximization by international finance capital and Indian big business", he said, adding this policy trajectory needed to be reversed.

On Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi's remarks on fighting corruption, he said, "The whole country knows and has seen on the television as to how the Congress party sabotaged the passage of the Lokpal Bill at the midnight hour in the Rajya Sabha during the last Winter Session."

People have once again been left guessing as to when the current the Lokpal Bill, with major amendments to make it stronger and effective, would be passed by Parliament, he said in an editorial in CPI(M) organ 'People's Democracy'.

Regarding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's defence of the petroleum price hike on the grounds of growing subsidy bill, Yechury said, "As an economist, he should have known that John Maynard Keynes had once famously commented that 'in the long run, we are all dead'."

The speeches at the Congress rally "must only redouble the people's resolve to mount mightier struggles against this reform policy trajectory," Yechury said.