India importing ‘speculation’ from Western countries, says CPM

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Friday , May 09, 2008 at 2241 hrs Continuing its attack against the US leadership over the statements on Indian middleclass and taking on the UPA government’s stand that the inflation is a “global phenomenon”, the CPI(M) said rather than inflation, “speculation” is being imported to India from the Western countries.

Citing India’s agricultural products import, the party also claimed that Indian consumption patterns could in “no way” contribute to the global food crisis.

“Even if we were to presume that Indians are consuming more food, its impact on the global economy would be felt when Indian exports to the global market are significant. The fact is that India’s share in the total world exports is a mere 1%. Of this, the export of agricultural products is a sheer 11.7%. Indian consumption patterns, thus, in no way, contribute to the global food crisis,” CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said in an editorial in the forthcoming issue of his party’s mouthpiece, the People’s Democracy.

The CPI(M), which was harsh in responding to the US administration’s observation that the increased consumption of Indian and Chinese middle class is the reason behind the global food crisis, on Thursday said US President George Bush’s and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice’s statements “cannot be brushed aside as senseless ranting”. “These are all attempts to mask the real cause for the current global crisis which is due in the main to the massive shifts towards bio-fuel in the West and due to speculation in trading which is the hallmark of imperialist globalisation,” he said in the editorial titled Bushspeak: You Starve For Our Prosperity.

Even as the Centre-appointed Abhijit Sen panel recommended no ban of the future trading of essential commodities, Yechury pitched again for regulation of future markets.