By IANS
New Delhi : The Communist Party of India (CPI) has supported the call given by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) for a third alternative force, and held the Congress-led government responsible for the downward spiral in the stock market.
There was a need for a third alternative in an institutionalised form to counter both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan said here Wednesday.
He was briefing mediapersons on the draft resolution for the party’s 20th congress to be held in Hyderabad March 23-27.
The CPI was open to dialogue with the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), a coalition of parties calling itself the “third front”, for “joining in the common struggle for evolving a programme-based alternative and not just an electoral grouping”, he said.
The third alternative should be secular and also have “pro-people” economic policies and a common programme, he said.
“We differentiate between the Congress and the BJP, though both have the same class, character and the same economic policies. While the BJP is out and out communal, the Congress sometimes compromises with communal forces for short-term political gains,” Bardhan said.
The CPI was echoing the view of its Left Front partner, CPI-M, which too in its political resolution for an upcoming Congress has called for a “third alternative force”. The Left Front supports the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government from outside.
Bardhan blamed the UPA government’s economic policies, holding these responsible for the BJP’s victories in elections to the Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assemblies last month.
Alleging that “malpractices” in the stock market had led to its crash Monday and Tuesday, the CPI demanded an inquiry into the collapse and sought a steep increase in the securities transaction tax (which is levied on purchase and sale of equities at the rate of 0.1 percent).
“We demand an appropriate inquiry as there are reasons to believe that malpractices, aberrations and the lack of a supervisory role by the Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) have led to such a crash,” party leader Gurudas Dasgupta said.
He held Finance Minister P. Chidambaram “morally responsible” along with the government’s economic policies for the mayhem on the bourses.
Bardhan said the Indian stock market is “increasingly becoming a casino”. It could lead to a “big crisis, may be a hundred times more than the Harshad Mehta episode”, referring to a security market scandal of the early 1990s that ended a bull run.
He said the government does not lose sleep when thousands of farmers commit suicide due to acute agrarian problems, “but when there is a panic in the market and the Sensex falls, the finance minister rushes in to reassure everyone”.
Reiterating the party’s opposition to the India-US civil nuclear deal, Bardhan suggested there could be nuclear cooperation with countries such as Russia and France that were quite “willing” for such an arrangement.
Commenting on the Left Front government in West Bengal, he said, “It has to function as a government of the front and not as a one-party government… There has to be transparency, mutual consultation on all major issues, including on the development of West Bengal.”
Bardhan said his party had been critical of the “unilateral way” the CPI-M dealt with the protests against land acquisition for industry that turned violent, “without consulting and taking other partners into confidence. The differences, however, were mostly sorted out through frank discussions.”