Friday, March 16, 2012

CPI, AITUC and PPP on budget

The Union Budget:A strange string of announcements: PPP
In his budget speech, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee quoted a line from William Shakespeare’s seminal play, Hamlet- The Prince of Denmark. , “ I must be cruel only to be kind,” he said, suggesting that it is time for the government to take tough actions to ensure a better future. But his actions were in dissonance to his words. The Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee was a strange string of announcements that made all the right noises about the problems faced by Indian economy, but was woefully inadequate in terms of policy measures to control these problems. Let us start from inflation. Over the past many months, almost all the top leaders of UPA government have admitted that common man deserve relief from the unconscionable levels of inflation that we have seen in the past 3-4 years. But despite this, the Finance Minister, increases the Excise duty by 2 per cent. Not only this, he extends the scope of service tax. All these enhancements are going to be passed on to the final consumer, and will fuel the inflation to further heights.  Amidst such circumstances, the minor income tax reliefs that the finance ministers seems to have offered appear to be a cruel joke.
By not controlling inflation, the government wants the common man to struggle to eke out a living, but on its own it continues to live at unconscionably high expenditure as is shown by the humungous government debt which close to 46 per cent of country’s GDP. Even when saddled with this monstrosity, there is no attempt to mend by the UPA government to mend its ways. The fiscal deficit is in excess of 5 per cent, way beyond the permissible limit of 2 per cent. Once you include the fiscal deficits of our profligate states, than we are staring at a figure that would reveal that India is on a precipice of debt disaster that can have catastrophic consequences for the economy. So basically India is facing a situation where we are saddled with the two most critical problems of a modern economy i.e. high inflation and high deficits. Add to it the political pusillanimity which has become a hallmark of the UPA government. With such a deadly cocktail in offering, it is obvious that foreign investors are not going to savour the prospect of coming to India (leave aside the Foreign Institutional Investors). With no investment coming in green field projects, I fail to see, how can the finance minister be hopeful of attaining GDP growth levels of 7.8 per cent.
Such talk is nothing but political sophistry aimed at diverting attention from government’s own inadequacies. The UPA government seems to develop cold feet on many of the initiatives it itself had pursued with great gusto initially. Mr Mukherjee’s speech today was resoundingly silent on Direct Tax Code as well as on any road map to implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Increase in disbursal of credit to agriculture is welcome but government has again been found wanting in ensuring the proper distribution of this credit. Independent researchers have shown the politicians have used this agriculture credit scheme to further their own objectives. Data shows, that the agriculture credit is disproportionately high in the constituencies of influential politicians and inadequate in areas where there is a dire need of funding.
There have been no reliefs or incentives for small scale manufacturers and even the sunrise sectors of biotech, IT, telecom and media- which have largely fuelled India’s growth in the last few years. There is in incentive for capacity expansion, which means, that fewer jobs would be created but that India’s economic growth would continue to buoyed by consumption. While consumption is an important facet of economic growth, an overlying importance of consumption instead of investment to fuel economic growth can be problematic. This problem is further exacerbated if the country is passing through a crisis of high inflation. Unfortunately, we are witnessing both consumption led growth as well as high inflation. It is staggering that the government led by an eminent economist, has chosen to do nothing about it.

This is against the interests of the workmen-AITUC
Com O P Mehta Secretary All India Trade Union Congress, Ludhiana and Com D P Maur – Secretary Joint Council of Trade Unions Ludhiana has criticized the union finance minister for decreasing the interest rate on the Employees Provident Fund from 9.5 to 8.25%. This is against the interests of the workmen who have minimum saving from this. He warned the government to revoke this decision otherwise face stiff opposition from the working people.

CPI Ludhiana unit termed the budget to be inflationary 
The Communist Party of India Distt. Ludhiana has termed the budget to be inflationary as increase in the service tax and the excise duty will lead to increase in the burden on the people. Marginal increase in the tax slab exemption is a mockery with the people as it no where meets the price rise during the last year. There is marginal increase in the health budget which will not meet the health care needs of the people as a minimum of 6% of the GDP is needed from the public spending to give basic minimum health care to all. No policy in employment generation and security of jobs has been defined. Agriculture section has not got the attention due to it. Decision to raise Rs. 30,000 crore  through disinvestment is against the interest of the nation and the working people. statement was issued by 
Asstt. Secretary Dr Arun Mitra and City Secretary Ramesh Rattan.                      

NARAIN KATARIA from New York

Reasons for the disasterous decimation of 
Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in UP elections   
March 13, 2012
Anti-Hindu attitude of the UPA Government led by Sonia Gandhi, their blind appeasement of the Muslims in India, torture and arrests of Hindu  saints and leaders and the multi-billion dollar scams of its key ministers in government -  all these factors contributed heavily to the humiliating defeat of The Dynasty this month in the Utter Pradesh state elections.
Now the details:
1.     Sonia Gandhi’s insidious attempt to draft the “Communal Violence Bill 2011” with help of the Islamists and Leftists was clearly viewed by the country’s large Hindu population as malicious in content and designed to destroy the Hinduism in India.
2.     Home Minister P. Chidambaram had openly equated the dangerous Islamic terrorism in country with the patriotic efforts of Hindu groups, which he labeled the “Saffron terrorism” or “Hindu terrorism.” Such mindless efforts from the government side deeply antagonized the one billion Hindus who had quietly decided to get even at the election time.
3.     The openly undemocratic and blatantly highhanded crushing of the Baba Ramdev’s peaceful protest at Delhi’s Ram Leela grounds with a brutal force of 5000 Delhi policemen on orders of the Congress Party leaders had angered many Hindus. The arrest and tortures of patriotic Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, Colonel Purohit, Swami Aseemanand and others had convinced the Hindu leaders to take action and get rid of the perpetrators of the injustice. UPA Government’s obstinate refusal to come up with a fair and effective Lokpal Bill for catching corrupt politicians in country also added fuel to the fire.
4.     The UPA government is so terribly frightened of the Islamic terrorism in country that it dare not take any strong action against. Additionally, it has ignored the sufferings of seven lakh Kashmiri Hindus and overlooked their genocide, ethnic cleansing and expulsion from the land of their ancestors.
5.     Hindu girls are kidnapped everyday not only in Pakistan but also in India and are converted to Islam. They are then forcibly married to Muslim men and the Congress Party government watches it all shamelessly. Minority Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh are already living in a state of Islamic subjugation and savagery. In December last year, 250 Hindus had left their homes and hearths in Pakistan and sought asylum in India.
6.     On the top of that, the UPA government’s sinister attempt to arbitrarily increase the quota of government jobs for Muslims taking away a share of OBC has angered the Hindu Society. In order to appease the Muslims for votes, the government avoids taking action on Afzal Guru who was ordered to be hanged by Supreme Court of India for his heinous crime of attacking the nation’s Parliament in 2001. All these crimes against the country made Hindus very unhappy.
7.     UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s son Rahul Gandhi is known to nurse a deep hatred against the Hindus. He considers the patriotic, peaceful and law abiding Hindus to be more dangerous for India than the internationally known Pakistani terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Tayiba. The young crown prince is reported to have told the United States ambassador Timothy Roemer that the growth of 'radicalized Hindu groups' could pose a bigger threat to the country.
8.     Under the UPA dispensation, the term secularism has turned into an euphemism for Hindu-bashing and Muslim-appeasement. Even though the country’s Hindu population is over 83%, Hindus are treated as the second class citizens and their voice is gagged.
9.     Thank goodness that the great men like Baba Ramdev, Dr. Subramanian Swamy and the freedom-fighter Anna Hazare are currently playing a big role in exposing the corruption in high places. They have taken up the important task of educating the masses and bringing back the billions of dollars of Indian money stashed in the foreign and Swiss accounts.
10.                         -The Congress party leaders like Digvijay Singh, Salman Khurshid, Rahul Gandhi, and Sonia Gandhi are busy protecting the criminals in government and covering their sins. These people have proved to be ineffective and totally uninspiring to the masses.  They probably believe that just by doing the Bhashan-bazi (giving lectures), they would be able to fool the country’s voters.
With the huge electoral loss of the Sonia-Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party in the UP elections, an old popular Bollywood song has once again come alive, “ jhumka gira re Bareli ke bazar mein.” It points out that the Dynasty has lost in a big way in the market place of Rai Bareli where their party was badly routed even though the region was their stronghold in the past.
We believe, in the upcoming national elections of year 2014, the world will witness the spectacle of rapid and inexorable rout of Sonia Gandhi and her cronies. In those elections, the corrupt ruling politicians and their buddies will suffer cataclysmic consequences for their egregious violations of Hindu Human Rights.