UPA's wrong economic policies have hit the poor: G Ramakrishnan

The United Progressive Alliance's wrong economic policies at the Centre and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's anti-people policies here had made the poor and the marginalised suffer a lot, said G. Ramakrishnan, State secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist), on Wednesday.

Participating in a protest meeting held at Madurai to condemn the respective governments for failing to control the rising prices of essential commodities at Scott Road here, he said that onion prices and prices of many vegetables had skyrocketed and become out of reach.

Mr. Ramakrishnan, along with cadre, raised slogans condemning various scams such as the 2G spectrum allocation scam, Commonwealth Games scam, Adarsh Housing Society scam and other alleged scams of the Karnataka government.

The State secretary questioned how the Centre could provide a free hand to the oil companies to fix the prices and demanded a reversal of its decision.

The price rise in petroleum products had badly hit the people who were already suffering from inflation, he said.

Online and speculative trading had really played havoc in the Indian economy and during January to November 2010 the traders involved in online and speculative trading had made Rs.95 lakh crore. In the meantime, more than 17,000 farmers had committed suicide in the country.

Speaking on the alleged 2G spectrum scam, he wondered how the DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, played the Dalit card stating that since A. Raja was a Dalit he was being victimised and later when it did not work he used the Aryan-Dravidian binary. Now, he had asked his party men to organise meetings across the State asking them to explain that it was not a scam but a notional loss to the government.

Speaking earlier, N. Nanmaran, MLA, Madurai East, explained how the CPI(M) had always been in the forefront taking up the common man's issues. R. Annadurai, urban district secretary, in his presidential address, introduced the candidate K. Chandrasekhar for the by-election to be held for Ward 45 of Madurai Corporation and appealed for support from people and alliance partners.

(source : The Hindu)