The Question Is: Why Should Singh Continue As PM?

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh is killing India. Majority Indians are suffering from slow starvation because of Singh’s wrong economic policies.

He has created the environment for price rise and when people are perishing, as none but the dishonest ones that benefit from his policies is able to afford the high cost of essential commodities, he has no qualms in saying that he is not an astrologer to predict when should the rising prices come down!

Who needs an astrologer in Man Mohan Singh? He has taken oath as the Prime Minister and he should act as the Prime Minister, not an astrologer.

It is time, he should understand that the Prime Minister’s main duty is to give a government that sees to it that people do not perish under price rise of essential foods. Price rise does not directly kill. It kills through slow starvation. Those who cannot afford the cost of food reduce their food consumption and that leads to slow starvation. Singh’s economic policy has pushed India to this sordid condition.

Free India had resolved to be a socialist country with the sole objective to emancipate people from poverty and profiteers. But Singh has sabotaged this resolve.

He, as Finance Minister under Narasingh Rao, had sabotaged India’s resolve to build up the country as a socialist republic and behind the back of the Parliament, he had subjected the country to imperialistic hegemony by signing the GATT document. His collaborator Pranab Mukherjee had then refuged to place the GATT document even before the Parliament.

In 1992, he had tendered his resignation after being held guilty by the JPC constituted to probe into the securities scam that owed its origin to his role as the Finance Minister of India. Many a Congress members of the Parliament had put tremendous pressure on everybody that mattered for removal of the adverse comment of the JPC on Dr. Singh; but the JPC did not buzz. His irresponsible assertions before the media that he was “not going to lose his sleep” because share prices were unreasonably rising had made the JPC look into his role in the discernible financial anarchy. He had to resign and he had resigned from the post of the Finance Minister. If Prime Minister Narasingh Rao had not heard Chandraswamy, his bed of tryst with the USA, the country should have been saved from the pernicious grip of the traitors that have transformed our democracy to plutocracy.

Aware of the damage his fiscal policy had done to India’s innumerable working class people, he had tried to hoodwink the sufferers by addressing to “six major tasks” in his budget speech delivered on 28 February 1994. He had described as “most important” the fifth one of these six tasks that said, “we must reorient our development policies and programs to address more effectively the problem of poverty, unemployment and social deprivation which affects a large mass of our people, particularly in the rural areas”. Sadly, he is now saying as the Prime Minister that he is unable to understand as to why price rise is hitting people so unbearably hard.

Let us see how so many times in the past he has assured the country of tackling price rise. If samples would suffice, we may recall, addressing the AICC at New Delhi on 21 August 2004 for the first time as Prime Minister, he had put his government’s priority on controlling the price rise that was hitting hard the people. He had tried to blame Vajapayee for the price rise, saying that it was due to the “misguided policies of the previous BJP led NDA government”, even though Vajpayee government’s policies were guided by the anti-socialist economic policy Singh himself had pushed the country into, as the finance minister in the Rao regime. However, members of the AICC were so disturbed over price rise that he had to declare, “controlling of prices was his government’s priority”.

But instead of controlling prices, he has all along contributed congenial climate to price rise. The Congress members have all along expressed worries over the rising woes of the people reeling as are they under unrelenting price rise that their own government is unable to undo as the country is running under anti-socialist policies of their Prime Minister.

If the Congress Working Committee is of any relevance, many of its members, in its session on 5 February 2010, had asked the government to take immediate steps to “reduce the layers of middlemen” between the farmers and consumers so that price rise may be controlled. But Singh was mum over this point. He just had said that things are “improving and soon there would be more improvement”. The CWC was not satisfied. Sensing the danger signal and driven by the desire to hoodwink the Parliament, the budget session whereof was soon to start, he appointed on the next day, i.e. 6 february 2010 a high-powered committee on price rise under the chairmanship of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee that comprised all the Chief Ministers of Congress ruled States.

But no improvement, as he had told the CWC, took place. People reeled under continuous price rise. The Parliament was rocked by the Opposition over the issue. When it commenced its budget session on 23 Feb 2010, immediately after the President’s address to the joint sitting, the united opposition stressed on discussion on the issue of price rise which led to adjournment of both the Houses.

Despite having defended the finance minister on 27 February 2010, Singh knew that the entire country was condemning his administration over unrelenting rise in prices of essential commodities. He used Mukherjee to convey the so-called high-power committee on price rise. The committee met on 8 April 2010. But no solution was envisaged / encouraged.

Came the Independence Day, 15 August 2010. Singh in his customary address to the nation had to confess that majority of Indians were hit hard by price rise. He shed meretricious tears for the poor; saying, “It is the poor who are the worst affected by rising prices, especially when the prices of commodities of everyday use like food-grains, pulses, vegetables increase”. Using the statistics of inflation as the scapegoat, he, however, declared, “We are making every possible efforts to tackle the problem”.

Singh knows what efforts his government made. But 2010 passed away sans any control over prices. On 12 January 2011, he presided over a high-level meeting on price rise. Several medium and long-term possibilities of price control was discussed; but no discussion was made on how to reduce “layers of middlemen” between farmers and consumers even though, as noted supra, there was loud thinking in CWC on 5 February 2010 that the government should reduce the middlemen if price rise was to be controlled.

Instead of leading his government to curb price rise, he reshuffled his cabinet on 19 January 2011 when a team of business leaders told him on 17 January that they were “alarmed at the widespread governance deficit almost in every sphere of national activity”.

Yet the media asked him after the reshuffle as to when the people should get relief from unbearable price rise. “I am not an astrologer” he said.

Now the question is: When he has not been able to curb the price rise of essential commodities, ever since he became the Prime Minister as sample instances shown supra, even though price rise forces people into slow starvation, why should he continue in the post and in whose interest?