The Hindu Business Line : Getting best of Left

THE Communists cause such trepidation among the intelligentsia that anything with which they are associated is presumed to come to grief. They are taken to be negative, dogmatic, doctrinaire, inflexible and obstructionist in their attitude.

Thus, the support from the outside extended by the 62-strong Left contingent to the Government formed by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is viewed as a sort of spanner in the works, that could interfere with the furtherance of the economic reforms launched by Dr Manmohan Singh in 1991 and continued unevenly by the National Democratic Alliance Government.

The impulsive pronouncements by the leading lights of both CPI and CPI (M) questioning the salient aspects of liberalisation relating to foreign direct investment, privatisation and the like, even while the drama over the selection of the Prime Ministerial nominee was being played out and before the UPA Government was formed, stoked the existing fears and sent stock market into a tailspin in irrational panic.

The fact of the Government being led by the architect of the reforms process, Dr Mnmohan Singh, applauded as the "genuine article" by The Economist, the appointment of the pragmatist, Mr P. Chidambaram, as Finance Minister, and generally the prevalence of pro-reforms thinking among most members of the Cabinet must, on the other hand, be making the Left wary as well.

No doubt, the Common Minimum Programme (CMP), once finalised, could go a long away in smoothening the passage of the coalition.

The Left, in fact, can have no quarrel with the guarded enunciation by the big guns of the Congress of the reforms plank of the Government. There is universal agreement that the aim of the reforms should be, Dr Singh reaffirmed, to wipe every tear from every eye, and not simply to line the pockets of the affluent and pander to the demands of the consumerist middle class mostly living in urban areas.

Similarly, indiscriminate resort en masse to disinvestment/privatisation is unwise in any circumstance and the merits of the emphasis proposed to be placed on a case-by-case approach are unquestioned. The determination on the part of the UPA constituents to boost investment in the rural sector will also be welcomed.

The Left, as is evident from its track record in West Bengal, has not been against reforms as such, so long as they meet the needs of the poor. There is no danger of its rocking the UPA boat provided it fulfils this essential condition which is also in accordance with supreme national interest.

B. S. Raghavan