NEW DELHI, Oct 16: CPI(M) today attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for converting the ‘Made in India’ motto to ‘Make in India,’ saying it was an “open invitation” to foreign capital to maximise profits using cheap labour and resources in the country.
“In his first Independence Day speech, Prime Minister spoke of making India an industrial hub by declaring ‘Made in India’ as our motto. In the US, he spoke repeatedly of ‘Make in India’.
“The former is propagated declaring the strengthening of India’s domestic industrial base, while the latter is an open invitation to foreign investments, particularly US investments. Their main objective always remains profit maximisation and not augmenting India’s productive capacities,” senior CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said.
India appears to be getting ready for further economic liberalisation by opening of its markets, resources and cheap labour “for profit maximisation. This is the surest recipe for imposing further hardships on the Indian people,” he said.
The “deadly cocktail” of imposing greater economic burden on the people and sharpening communal polarisation “continues to be intensified under this Modi-led NDA government,” Yechury said in an editorial in the latest issue of CPI(M) organ ‘People’s Democracy’.
Observing that “much was being made about a fleeting decline in the Wholesale Price Index,” he said the “elementary fact is that as far as the common man is concerned, what matters to his daily existence is the Consumer Price Index, which always is exponentially higher than the WPI.”
Further, he said a fall in the inflation rate “does not mean a fall in the prices. What it means is that the rate of rise in the prices is lower than what it was. Prices are nevertheless rising.”
“This elementary economics seems to have escaped the
Ministers and spokesmen of the government who are being ably cheered by the India Inc.,” the CPI(M) leader said.
Pointing out that there was an unprecedented decline in the global crude prices that has greatly eased the pressures on the economy by lowering our import costs, Yechury said this should have led to lowering the prices of diesel.
But diesel prices have not been reduced while the decline in petrol prices “is also much less than the international price decline, thus, permitting the petroleum retailers to continue to reap super profits.
“This is the meaning of the ‘payback time’ to those who have handsomely financed the Modi election campaign,” he alleged.
Yechury also contended that the recent sharp fall in crude prices was engineered to “squeeze” Russia, a major oil exporter, to withdraw from Ukraine.
“Many have pointed out that this sharp decline in international oil prices is an engineered one aimed at squeezing Russia, which is a major oil exporter, in order to mount pressures on it to withdraw from its intervention in Ukraine in the defence of the besieged common people there.
“USA and Europe seek to break Ukraine from Russia’s dependence and utilise its vast natural resources to bolster their staggering economies by incorporating it into the European Union,” Yechury said. (PTI)
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