PRAGOTI

Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, and inspiration to millions of left supporters and poor people in the world died of cancer today. This is my personal tribute to a great revolutionary.

What the barrage of criticisms of the central government from across the political spectrum - over the mega corruption scandals and relentless price rise - could not achieve in the past couple of years, was accomplished by a couple of adverse reports in the western media. Time magazine’s description of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the “underachiever” who was "unwilling to stick his neck out on reforms” made him sit up and show that he was after all not “asleep at the wheel”.

 The decision of the UPA government to open up the retail sector in the country to FDI is an example of the basic fallacy in the 'growth fetishism' of the votaries of neo-liberalism. While the government argues that this move will generate investor confidence in the Indian economy and lead the country to high growth, in reality the problems of the common people- deprivation, poverty and hunger- far from being ameliorated will actually be intensified. 

The recent announcement by the government to increase the price of diesel by Rs 5/- is wrong. Over the last two years, the Indian economy is reeling under high inflation, which has not subsided even after major interventions by the RBI. In such a situation, increasing the price of diesel, which is an intermediate commodity for all kinds of production, is only going to give rise to a cascading effect on inflation.