India Uncut
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Sunday, February 13, 2005
Not right
Gurcharan Das, the author of the marvellous India Unbound, asks in his latest column:
So why should be "bother to listen to the Left"? Because, bizarrely, it has more than 50 seats in parliament. It's our fault.
Why should we bother to listen to the Left when it has been consistently wrong in the past fifty years? It opposed computers in our offices. It banned English from primary schools. It supported the Licence Raj, which created the present culture of corruption. It advocated a foreign policy that landed us on the losing side of the Cold War. It backed inefficient government monopolies in preference to competitive markets.
It protected 8% organised labour at the expense of the 92% unorganised workers, while feeding the myth that it stood for the poor. As for the Communists, why should we heed the party which sided with the British during the Quit India movement, which did not condemn the Chinese invasion in 1962, and which was silent during the Emergency when the entire opposition was in jail?
In the past nine months the Left has opposed foreign investment as vociferously as the RSS/SJM when the nation desperately needs capital for infrastructure. With oil prices hitting the roof, the Left fought against the rise in cooking gas price; it forced the interest rate hike in Employment Provident Fund; it opposed unbundling of State Electricity Boards, thus preventing electricity reform.
So why should be "bother to listen to the Left"? Because, bizarrely, it has more than 50 seats in parliament. It's our fault.
