Mishra Lauds Maran, Wants Curbs On Subsidies 5 Col

Has the Communist Party of India (CPI) become market-friendly and taken a stand against government subsidies? If the utterances of senior CPI leader and Union minister for agriculture Chaturanan Mishra are to be taken as the partys stand, it would appear so.

Mishra wants greater clarity in government thinking and major changes in attitude to industry and agriculture. Moreover, at a time when the Left parties have been crying hoarse over the United Front governments economic measures, Mishra is all praise for Union minister for industries Murasoli Maran, who has been the subject of Left ire in the recent past.

 

There is no clarity. I am the agriculture minister. I am also the same Communist as before, but now when I see things it is very clear to me that a big change in policy is needed in agriculture. I did not realise this earlier. Now I tell my colleagues it is a new situation we face...In the public sector, neither the government nor the trade unions have thought of new ways of running this sector. The laws of the market have to be accepted, Mishra said in an interview to Home TV.

Calling upon his colleagues in the Left and the government to jettison old attitude towards industry, Mishra chided the private sector for only talking about profits and its rights. Now the private sector has to understand that it has to compete with foreign companies and MNCs.

This is why we have to find a new way of working. The government has to adopt a new policy that gets the maximum cooperation from industry. The old attitude to industry must be jettisoned, Mishra said.

According to him, the traditional attitude of the Communists to the public sector was the mistake committed by us in the past.

In the changed situation, the question is how to function in the public sector profitably. It must be competitive. It must abide by the rules of the market. Market-oriented units can only be preserved. This was lacking in the past in the public sector. If somebody is correcting it, he should not be blamed for that. Maran is the man who helped us and the whole country in reviving the ten public sector units. I dont know why people say Maran is against the public sector, Mishra remarked.

On the issue of government extending subsidies to various sectors, he said much thought should be given before deciding on the subsidies.

If you go on subsidising the price of everything and you dont care for the quality and the choice of the consumers, what will happen? In the past the public sector, when it was starved of capital, could not go to the primary issue market for getting money. That was the mistake that was committed. Subsidies should not be used in a wrong way. That should be carefully thought out and applied with judicious thinking, Mishra said.

Calling for changes in the agriculture policy, he said: Everyone says agriculture is very important. But so far only 30 per cent of the countrys crops are covered by the green revolution. Seventy per cent is outside. No government has so far even though about what should be done for this 70 per cent. They too need to be brought into the system, they need irrigation, fertilisers, improved grain and credit.

Without naming Union finance minister P Chidambaram, Mishra disapproved of the practice of some of his colleagues dubbing him as an agent of MNCs. he said he had suggested a code of conduct for ministers in the coalition government, by which no individual minister is criticised by name by any of the partners.

That language should not be used. What I want is that the coalition partners should suggest or criticise in a friendly way...Sometimes it so happens or sometimes it appears in the press that (communist) criticism is not friendly, Mishra said.