Seeing the current global financial crisis as another opportunity to club anti-Congress forces, the CPI (M) has called to resist Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram's financial sector reforms plans.
Ahead of the Parliament session, where the government might propose some reformist legislations, party General Secretary Prakash Karat has tried to alert all 'non-Left' parties against possible damages as 'Chidambaram obviously does not fall' in the category of leaders or policy makers who 'review their own stand in the light of experience and realities.'
Coming down heavily on Chidambaram for doggedly pursuing reforms, Karat wrote in a recent article in People's Democracy, 'Since the UPA government assumed office, he has been the most consistent and single-minded in the pursuit of financial sector liberalisation. After the burst of the real estate bubble and the financial crisis in the United States, one would have expected this ardent advocate of financial sector reforms to rethink. But that has not happened.'
After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and the bailout of AIG by the US government, the finance minister had assured there were no reasons to panic and halt financial sector reforms.
Declaring that Indian banks did not have much exposure to the US derivative market, Chidambaram had maintained that government regulations would remain one step ahead of innovations.
According to Karat, the current crisis must open the eyes of all the political parties who support financial liberalisation.
'Can they be unconcerned about the pension rights of millions of government employees? The New Pension Scheme initiated by the centre, if implemented, would lead to thousands of crores of rupees of the employees going into the stock markets. No regulatory authority can stop the wild fluctuations in the markets. The net result would be that the employees would get pension less than what they are getting in the earlier scheme,' he wrote.
© 2025