Palash Speaks

Cheerleaders Strike Indigenous India with Mind control Terror

Palash Biswas

George Bush and Ronald Reagan have been the Most Successful Cheerleaders. And the success rate never trailed behind War Game Politics of US Weapon Industry Imperialist Manusmriti Apartheid Post Modern Galaxy Order Success! Cheerleaders successful team heritage is traced from Darling Madonna, Hellie Berry, Mariel Streep to Washington Red Sklin of IPL, the money spinning neo revolution of Indian Brahminical Ruling Class.

Cheerleaders may also be traced amongst all our Comrador Politicians of different colors who are also involved with XXX Cricket Carnival with a solid Agenda of Brain Washing to destroy the Disadvantaged Indigenous in this divided bleeding sub continent.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday met the Left leaders to discuss the price rise crisis and said that the government was taking all necessary steps to deal with the problem and that there was no need for political parties to indulge in scare-mongering.

Asking the political parties to avoid the temptation of politicising the misery of the people, Singh warned them against creating an environment of scarcity that would encourage speculators and hoarders.

Left as well as the Right belong to the Ruling Hegemony. Though UPA runs the government of India which controls the basic tool of mass destruction, the State Power. GOI is responsible to the Parliament, elected by Majoritorian Electoral system depriving the indigenous untouchable and tribal, rural and agrarian people the much wanted Political representation! Human and civil Rights nullified. nationalities massacred. Indigenous production system destroyed. The flow of Refugee Influx from Inside as well as Outside never stops as it helps the ruling Hegemony to consolidate the favourable vote bank with clubbing minorities and demographic readjustment. They call it power sharing. In fact the Parliamentary Political Power in this so called democracy is shared by ruling and resistant powergroups and Common Men have no participation in the affairs of Nation.Neo Liberal economic policy has made this divided Subcontinent a cluster of Colonies managed by MNCs. Nation withers away and so called Civil society with full fledged purchasing power takes over.

All this nonsense goes on the name of Public Interest, Development, Infrastructure, Growth Rate, Welfare State and Revolution , too. Every time ultimate victims have to be the Indigenous People consisting of Eighty Five percent Untouchables, Tribals, OBC and minorities specially Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Anglo Indians plus converted christians!

This is the story of Sensex Shining India governed by the three percent caste Hindus politically, socially, culturally, economically and finally, administratively. Any resistance whatsoever is crushed mercilessly. This is the story of all development projects and shemes, foreign relations and collabrations, strategic regrouping, joint venture, SEZ drive, dual citizensship, Chemical Hubs, Nuclear power Plants, modified genetic Seeds, vaccination, privatization, disinvestment, CRS, VRS, Retail chain and so on. The stories climax in Telengana, Dhimri Block, Shrikakulam, NaxalBari, Nandigram, Kaling Nagar, marichjhanpi or anywhere else with the same result and it is Massacre! Genocide Infinite.

It is always reciprocal. Centre is run by UPA. States are governed by NDA or Left as well as UPA and UNPA. They defend the interstes of the Ruling Caste Hindu Hegemony collectively and the system of Enslavement continues.

They promote technology and English to disarm the disadvantaged unskilled indigenous agarrian communities and reserve all opportunities for the ruling Class. Constitutional resrvatin is a farce as Privatisation and neolibral policies have closed all doors of Employment. since the Indigenous production system is killed and also they killed the Constitution and Democracy as well, Indigenous People have no way of sustenance. Now the family Planning happens to be irrelevant as so many people die starving daily. Medical care and all types of social services are thus privatised and you need reasonable purchasing power to sustain yourself!

They never promote knowledge, mother language, indigenous culture, higher education , science and research. Trading is the only way to generate resources. Sales happne to be the only aveneue open for job besides outsourcing! Basic necessities are neglected. Coomodities as food and clothing, medicines and housing are so dearly that ordinary people may not survive. What about the displaced and ejected people from their roots, land, livelihood and life?

Information Technology is the topmost priority as it is the best tool for Mind Control system. Total Brain Washing. Total annihilation. IT happens to be the best Weapon of Mass Detruction. The campaign is led by the Toilet Media, run by MNCs and fed by FDI. Information Explosion transormed into total brain washing.

Cricket Carnival happens to be the most entertaing part of the Mind control Game subverting all issues relating to the suffering Indigenous disadvantaged eighty five percnt people of this subcontinent.

So, the political parties happen to the best Knight riders of Modern Times accompanied by Cheerleaders! Politicians are never behind this XXX Reality Show Live.

What Nautanke is this?

A sharp rise in food prices has developed into a global crisis, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday .

Ban said the U.N and all members of the international community are very concerned, and immediate action is needed.

He spoke to reporters at U.N. offices in Austria, where he was meeting with the nation's top leaders for talks on how the United Nations and European Union can forge closer ties.

"This steeply rising price of food — it has developed into a real global crisis," Ban said, adding that the World Food Program has made an urgent appeal for additional $755 million.

"The United Nations is very much concerned, as all other members of the international community," Ban said. "We must take immediate action in a concerted way all throughout the international community."

Ban urged leaders of the international community to sit down together on an "urgent basis" to discuss how to improve economic distribution systems and the production of agricultural products.

For an alliance that lost to the Congress because of its hype on ‘India shining’, the unprecedented price rise has come as godsent to expose the government’s claim of being pro-aam admi and keep the issue alive for electoral gains in coming polls, starting with Karnataka.

As a show of unity on the issue, the MPs of the BJP-led NDA formed a human chain around in Parliament complex as Leader of Opposition LK Advani said, “The family budgets of not only the poor but even the middle classes have been badly eroded by the steep rise in the prices of cereals, pulses, vegetables, edible oil, sugar, milk, fruits and meat.”

He said, “If you can’t stop price rise then you should quit and the country should go to polls. The government’s failure is worse compounded by its apathy, insensitivity and lack of accountability.”

Calling the inflation a ‘silent tsunami’, Advani joined other NDA members, including leaders like Rajnath Singh, George Fernandes and Manohar Joshi, in forming the chain.

“I relate that situation to the current one where the common man is being denied the right to food due to price rise. The NDA will continue its agitation against inflation throughout the country in different forms,” Advani said. The NDA has already called for a general nationwide strike against inflation on May 2.

The issue figured in both Houses where the agitated Opposition raised slogans seeking to expose the UPA’s “aam aadmi” plank. Later both the Houses were adjourned for two hours as proceedings were disrupted.

In the Lok Sabha, the NDA MPs trooped into the well of the House shouting slogans denouncing the government — as the Question Hour was drawing to close.

Left leaders on Friday sharply reacted to the Prime Minister's Office statement asking parties not to politicise the price rise issue and said the government should not be "callous" towards people's miseries.

"This equally applies to the PMO because, by saying this, they are themselves politicising the issue. Government must eschew the irresponsibility of being callous towards the hardships of the people," said CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury here.

The CPI(M) leader, who along with other Left leaders met the Prime Minister on the price rise issue, was reacting to the PMO statement asking political parties to eschew the temptation of politicising the misery of the people and not to indulge in "scare mongering".

It also warned against creating an environment of scarcity that would only help speculators and hoarders.

In the same vein, CPI leader D Raja said price rise was not a result of "politicisation but a harsh reality facing the people. The government should take steps to mitigate the people's problems."

Describing the PMO statement as "very unfortunate", Yechury asserted that it was the duty of political parties to raise people's issues.

"If it means not to raise people's issues, we cannot take such an irresponsible step being a political party", he said.

Yechury's party colleague Basudeb Acharia was also critical of the government's approach on the price situation, saying it was "dithering and was reluctant to take any action on the issue also."

Acharia said the PMO statement "proves that the government is not serious enough on the matter. Rather, it is not at all serious with regard to the plight of the people."

Accusing the government of not taking any effective steps to control the prices, he demanded immediate restoration of foodgrains to Kerala where the PDS allocation had been slashed by as much as 86 per cent.

The CPI(M) leader also lashed out at the BJP on grounds that most members of the prime opposition party were absent from Parliament when a discussion was being held on price rise.

"Even the Leader of the Opposition (L K Advani) was not present. He has no time to attend the House", he said.

Referring to the PMO statement which said agriculture sector was "neglected" since 1996, he said the sector had been neglected since the economic reforms began in 1991.

"In the past four years of the UPA government, they have not taken enough steps to increase production and capital formation", the CPI(M) leader said.

"Now the Prime Minister is only hoping that a good monsoon will increase production and the agrarian crisis will be overcome. So, without taking any action, this is the expectation of the government", he said.

Asked to comment on government announcement that it would take a sense of the House on the Indo-US nuclear deal, he said, "they have already witnessed the sense of the House. Majority of the members in both Houses are against the deal".

He said there is no need for taking the House into confidence once again on the matter as the sense of the House is absolutely clear.

With the largest indigenous population in the world, India has often done little to protect the rights of these groups that have worked and lived off of communally shared forest lands for thousands of years. The Supreme Court of India has touted Public Interest Litigation -- PIL, also sometimes called Social Action Litigation -- as an effective tool for protecting the rights of the disadvantaged, especially indigenous groups. While this litigation is the judicial equivalent of class action suits in the United States, there are important differences. The Indian Court specifically has focused on the fundamental rights to life and equality. Fundamental rights guaranteed to all Indian citizens include life and equality. The Supreme Court has interpreted these two rights to include the right to work and live with dignity and liberty. Procedurally, the Court’s practice of PIL has relaxed the rules of ‘standing.’ It has effectively allowed persons or groups not personally involved in cases to bring suit on behalf of others, which makes for greater openness of the system.

Heere you are! a glimpse of Disadvantaged Indigenous India!

Three million indigenous rat-catching tribals in India suffer from poverty through use of an inefficient and hazardous traditional rat-catching method. New technology/plan is safer and more profitable!

There are about 300 million indigenous men, women and children worldwide. They are extremely diverse - more than 5,000 different groups of indigenous peoples live in more than 70 countries. They make up one third of the world's 900 million extremely poor rural people. In many countries, indigenous peoples are the most severely disadvantaged. They are often forced to live on the least productive terrain, denied rights to land, forests and other natural resources that they have managed sustainably for millennia, and marginalized by modern society.

Today, there is a growing consensus that accountability is crucial to poverty reduction, human development and human security. The human rights approach to poverty reduction emphasizes the obligations of governments and all partners in the development process and requires that they be held to account for their conduct in relation to international human rights. This has led to greater emphasis on the obligations of governments and UN agencies towards indigenous peoples.

And this?

Political parties must not politicise the misery of the people, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Friday after Left leaders met him to voice concern over rising food prices as inflation climbed from last week's 7.14 percent to 7.33 percent.

Manmohan Singh asked the delegation of Left leaders led by Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) general secretary Prakash Karat not to create panic about food scarcity.

"Political parties must not politicise the misery of the people and indulge in scare mongering about food scarcity," said a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).

"The government will take all steps to curb inflation. We expect normal monsoon to increase food output. Procurement of food grains is expected to go up," it added.

"Agriculture production was rising. It had gone down after 1996. The UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government had taken several measures to step up production."

The Congress-led UPA has been hemmed in by criticism from all sides - its own allies as well as the opposition - for not being able to rein in rising food prices.

"We reiterated before the Prime Minister our demands to ban futures trading, slash duties on petroleum products, strengthen the public distribution system and punish hoarders," said Abani Roy, leader of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP).

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had on Thursday formed a human chain outside Parliament and accused the government of failing to bring down prices.

The Left parties last week addressed a public meeting with the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) here on rising prices.

Randeep Ramesh in Delhi reports for Guardian:

In boots and spangled shorts, the cheerleaders for India's premier cricket league have caused a furious debate over money and morality in a country where cricket is a religion and prudence a virtue.

Brought in to heighten the appeal of the new Twenty20 matches, the gyrating young cheerleaders have angered politicians, who say they are an affront to Indian culture, and some conservative players, who wonder why they are needed.

The cheerleaders have complained that lewd comments and ogling from spectators are proving at best a tiring distraction and at worst sexual harassment. "It's been horrendous," Tabitha, a cheerleader from Uzbekistan, told the Hindustan Times. "Wherever we go we do expect people to pass lewd, snide remarks but I'm shocked by the nature and magnitude of the comments people pass here."

There is little doubt of the stir that the cheerleaders have caused in the country where a Muslim female tennis star, Sania Mirza, was criticised for playing in short skirts and where actor Richard Gere caused a storm of protest by publicly kissing Bollywood actor Shilpa Shetty.

Politicians in Mumbai have threatened to ban the cheerleaders from games, while teams have beefed up security.

"I think in the Indian context [cheerleaders] are seen as slightly sleazy which is not a reflection on the women but the perception [from Indian men]. So lewd comments, I am sorry to say, do not surprise me at all," said Mukul Kesavan, a cricket writer.

The Indian cricket league's success signals the country's new dominance, with top players earning £100,000 a week during the tournament.

Photos of dancing cheerleaders have made the front pages of Indian newspapers. Charu Sharma, chief executive of Bangalore Royal Challengers, defended importing American-style razzmatazz. "Let us not play this high-handed moral belief game. It is only small maverick groups that are making a noise," Sharma told Reuters.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/apr/25/cricket.india

Cheerleaders will not be banned during IPL cricket matches in Mumbai but they may have to shed their skimpy outfits with the police on Friday warning of action against the organisers if their shows are found to be vulgar.

As the police cleared the air on whether the scantily-clad cheergirls will be allowed to perform in a Navi Mumbai stadium on April 27 by imposing some conditions, the 'ban cheerleaders' chant grew loud with West Bengal joining Maharashtra in targeting the dancing beauties.

Senior BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu also joined the chorus of protests saying the dance was a "distraction and nonsense" as a debate raged over whether US-style cheerleaders had a role during cricket matches in the country.

"The girls are merely artistes who perform as per the instructions of organisers," Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Ramrao Wagh said, adding that a performance license has been granted to the organisers of the match between Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers to be held at Nerul's D Y Patil stadium.

In the event of the cheerleaders indulging in obscenity, Wagh said, the "license holders" (the organisers) will be prosecuted under various provisions of the Bombay Police Act for indecency in a public place and breach of license terms.

Wagh said the show should not be vulgar or obscene nor offend the dignity of women. He however said there have been no instructions from the government.

West Bengal Sports Minister Subash Chakravarty said the cheerleaders had no role and were out of context during sporting encounters and there was no need to import Western culture. Chakravarty, who was supported by PWD Minister Kshiti Goswami(RSP and Water Investigation Minister Nandgopal Bhttacharya(CPI), said he will take up the issue with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

In the midst of controversy over the presence of cheerleaders at IPL matches, police on Friday said they could perform at the stadium in Navi Mumbai on April 27 but action will be taken against organisers if their act is found to be "vulgar" or "indecent".

"The girls are merely artistes who perform as per the instructions of organisers," Navi Mumbai Police Commissioner Ramrao Wagh said, adding that a performance license has been granted to the organisers of the match between Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers to be held at Nerul's D Y Patil stadium.

In the event of the cheerleaders indulging in obscenity, Wagh said, the "license holders" (the organisers) will be prosecuted under various provisions of the Bombay Police Act for indecency in a public place and breach of license terms.

Wagh, however said they had not received any directions from the state government on the issue yet.

Maharashtra's Minister of State for Home, Siddhram Mhetre had on Thursday told reporters that the government will not allow the cheerleaders to perform as their acts are "absolutely obscene" and wondered why the organisers required "semi nude" women at cricket matches.

The minister had said strict action will be taken if the cheerleaders violated the norms of decency in their attire.

However, he had not specified if action will be taken against the artistes or the organisers.

Redskins cheerleaders train local girls

Friday, 25 April , 2008, 12:29
Last Updated: Friday, 25 April , 2008, 17:19

Bangalore: The svelte Washington Redskins Cheerleaders, who have created more than a stir with their presence in the Indian Premier League (IPL), will leave behind a bunch of girls trained by them to set up a permanent presence here.

The first ever Pro Cheerleader audition in India got started two days after their arrival here April 13 to create the first ever cheerleading squad in the country for Bangalore Royal Challengers, for their inaugural game April 18.

IPL: Full coverage

The Washington Redskins cheerleaders, known as the "First Ladies of Football" in the United States, have a squad of 12 Cheerleaders and two choreographers in India. They were scheduled to spend 18 days travelling across India with the Royal Challengers owned by Vijay Mallya.

Though the squad will leave India, Entertainment and Cheerleading Director Donald Wells and two-year veteran Sharica will be here for three more weeks, according to the Redskins website.

Are IPL cheerleaders a needless distraction?

Wells will then hand over the new squad to Stephanie Jojokian, Director and Choreographer of the Redskins cheerleaders, in mid-May. She will spend 10 days with the Bangalore cheerleaders. By the time this project is complete, the Redskins Cheerleading department will have spent over 10 weeks creating a new cheerleading world in India.

India warns cricket cheerleaders
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7366516.stm

Cheerleaders have been brought in from all over the world Pic: Sandipan Chatterjee/Indian Express

Indian police say the organisers of the new tournament transforming world cricket could be fined if cheerleaders are deemed to be dressed indecently.

The cheerleaders have been introduced into the Indian Premier League as part of moves to add glamour and entertainment to the game.

Some politicians say the cheerleaders are "vulgar and obscene".

Mumbai police say they will be checking that the cheerleaders' performances do not violate entertainment licences.

The cheerleading girls, wearing short skirts and low-cut tops, have been hired from around the world to perform during the matches which are also being heavily endorsed by leading Bollywood stars.

They include cheerleaders from the Washington Redskins.

'Lines of decency'

Ram Rao Vagh, the police commissioner for New Mumbai, a suburb of Mumbai, where the home team is hosting five matches starting on Sunday, told the BBC that they were not considering any action against the cheerleaders themselves.

What's wrong with cheerleaders? I am also a family person, I do not see anything negative in it

Shah Rukh Khan

"It is difficult to enforce moral policing, we cannot define vulgarity always. It is difficult to ascertain what is vulgar and obscene," Mr Vagh said.

But he said the organisers could be fined for violating the norms of the entertainment licence they had secured for allowing performances in the stadium.

Senior officers would decide whether the cheerleaders had crossed the "lines of decency".

A spokesman for the local team, the Mumbai Indians, said they were not worried.

"Our cheerleaders are properly dressed. They are within limits of what our culture permits. So we have no problems," Javed Akhtar told the BBC.

'Routine'

However, the junior interior minister of western Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital, said the performances of cheerleading girls at the Indian Premier League matches were "absolutely obscene".

Cheerleaders have complained of sections of the crowd jeering at them Pic: Sandipan Chatterjee/Indian Express

"We live in India where womanhood is worshipped. How can anything obscene like this be allowed?," Siddharam Mehetre told the Press Trust of India news agency.

"This thing is meant for foreigners and not for us. Mothers and daughters watch these matches on television. It does not look nice."

Many others find the indignation misplaced, coming from a city, which is home to a thriving industry of Bollywood films where dance sequences featuring women in skimpy dresses are routine.

Bollywood actor, Shah Rukh Khan, who also owns one of the teams in the competition, is one of them.

"What's wrong with cheerleaders? I am also a family person, I do not see anything negative in it," he said.

The head of India's National Commission for Women said there was nothing wrong with the cheerleaders if it "just for adding entertainment to the game".

"It has to be presented in the right manner keeping Indian values intact," said Girija Vyas.

A former Bollywood actor and a politician belonging to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shatrughan Sinha said the cheerleaders were making a "mockery" of the game.

There have been reports in the Indian newspapers of cheerleaders complaining of sections of the crowd jeering at them and making lewd comments.

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Cheerleading
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Youth Cheerleaders during a football halftime show. Youth Cheer - high school ages and younger - make up the vast majority of cheerleaders and cheer teams.
Cheerleading is a sport[1][2][3][4] that uses organized routines made from elements of some tumbling, dance, jumps and stunting to direct the event's spectators to cheer on sports teams at games and matches and/or compete at cheerleading competitions. The athlete involved is called a cheerleader. With an estimated 1.5 million participants in allstar cheerleading (not including the millions more in high school, college or little league participants) in the United States alone, cheerleading is, according to Newsweek's Arian Campo-Flores, "the most quintessential of American sports."[1] The growing presentation of the sport to a global audience has been led by the 1997 start of broadcasts of cheerleading competition by ESPN International and the worldwide release of the 2000 film Bring it On. Due in part to this recent exposure, there are now an estimated 100,000 participants scattered around the rest of the world in countries including Australia, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Japan,[5] the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. [1]

Contents
[hide]
1 History
2 Types of teams
2.1 School-sponsored
2.2 Youth league
2.3 All-Star cheerleading
3 Cheerleaders
3.1 Famous ex-cheerleaders
4 Cheerleading in popular culture
4.1 Movies and television
4.2 Video games
5 Sport debate
6 Dangers of cheerleading
7 See also
8 References
9 External links

History

Minnesota Gopher cheerleader Johnny Campbell
Cheerleading first appeared in the United States in the late 1880s with the crowd chanting as a way to encourage school spirit at athletic events. The first organized, recorded cheer was yelled "Ray, Ray, Ray! TIGER, TIGER, SIS, SIS, SIS! BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! Aaaaah! PRINCETON, PRINCETON, PRINCETON!" at Princeton University in 1884.[6] A few years later, Princeton graduate, Thomas Peebles introduced the idea of organized crowd cheering at football games to the University of Minnesota. However, it was not until 1898 that University of Minnesota student Johnny Campbell directed a crowd in cheering "Rah, Rah, Rah! Sku-u-mar, Hoo-Rah! Hoo-Rah! Varsity! Varsity! Varsity, Minn-e-So-Tah!”, making Campbell the very first cheerleader and November 2, 1898 the official birth date of organized cheerleading. Soon after, the University of Minnesota organized a "yell leader" squad of 6 male students, who still use Campbell's original cheer today[6] In 1903 the first cheerleading fraternity, Gamma Sigma was founded.[7] Cheerleading started out as an all-male activity, but females began participating in 1923, due to limited availability of female collegiate sports. At this time, gymnastics, tumbling, and megaphones were incorporated into popular cheers.[7] Today it is estimated that 97% of cheerleading participants are female, but males still makeup 50% of collegiate cheering squads. [8]

Cornell University cheerleader on a 1906 postcard
In 1948, Lawrence "Herkie" Herkimer, of Dallas, TX and a former cheerleader at Southern Methodist University formed the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA) as a way to hold cheerleading clinics. In 1949, The NCA held its first clinic in Huntsville, TX with 52 girls in attendance.[8] "Herkie" contributed many "firsts" to the sport including the founding of Cheerleader & Danz Team uniform supply company, inventing the herkie, (where one leg is bent towards the ground and the other is out to the side as high as it will stretch in the toe touch position)[9] and creating the "Spirit Stick".[7] By the 1960s, college cheerleaders began hosting workshops across the nation, teaching fundamental cheer skills to eager high school age girls. In 1965, Fred Gastoff invented the vinyl pom-pon and it was introduced into competitions by the International Cheerleading Foundation (now the World Cheerleading Association or WCA). Organized cheerleading competitions began to pop up with the first ranking of the "Top Ten College Cheerleading Squads" and "Cheerleader All America" awards given out by the International Cheerleading Foundation in 1967. In 1978, America was introduced to competitive cheerleading by the first broadcast of Collegiate Cheerleading Championships on CBS[6][7]

In the 1960's National Football League (NFL) teams began to organize professional cheerleading teams. The Baltimore Colts (now the Indianapolis Colts) was the first NFL team to have an organized cheerleading squad.[10] It was the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders who gained the spotlight with their revealing outfits and sophisticated dance moves, which debuted in the 1972-1973 season, but were first seen widely in Super Bowl X (1976). This caused the image of cheerleaders to permanently change, with many other NFL teams emulating them. Most of the professional teams' cheerleading squads would more accurately be described as dance teams by today's standards; as they rarely, if ever, actively encourage crowd noise or perform modern cheerleading moves.

Cheerleaders warming up for competition
The 1980s saw the onset of modern cheerleading with more difficult stunt sequences and gymnastics being incorporated into routines. ESPN first broadcasted the National High School Cheerleading Competition nationwide in 1983. Cheerleading organizations such as the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Advisors (AACCA) started applying universal safety standards to decrease the number of injuries and prevent dangerous stunts, pyramids and tumbling passes from being included in routines. [11] In 2003, the National Council for Spirit Safety and Education (NCSSE) was formed to offer safety training for youth, school, all star and college coaches. The NCAA requires college cheer coaches to successfully complete a nationally recognized safety-training program. The NCSSE or AACCA certification programs are both recognized by the NCAA.

Today, cheerleading is most closely associated with American football and basketball. Sports such as soccer, ice hockey, volleyball, baseball, and wrestling sometimes sponsor cheerleading squads. The ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup in South Africa in 2007 was the first international cricket event to have cheerleaders. The Florida Marlins were the first Major League Baseball team to have cheerleaders. Debuting in 2003, the "Marlin Mermaids" gained national exposure and have influenced other MLB teams to develop their own cheer/dance squads

Political parties and the Government, both sides of the Ruling Hegemony are playing for the gallery and it won`t change the situation! We have to feel the heat of Inflation. Only we!

You should remeber the media hype on Electioneering Budgets!
What happened?
Are the common consumers relieved a little bit?
What happns to be the affairs of Indian economy?
The only scale entitled for shining India, the Sensex is falling apart.

No Family planning needed as starvation rates are so high! Medical care is privatised and no one without purchasing capacity may afford treatment nowadays. So happens to be the condition of education and employment. No way for sustaining onself these days. The ruling class is concerned for only previleged classes as security forces and government employees! Cremy layer is entertained at every level as political reservation continues with an infinite brokerproduction. SEZ drive launced Enblock Genocide of Indigenous people.

Palash Biswas

Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551
Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com

Inflation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Inflation is a rise in the general level of prices over time. It may also refer to a rise in the prices of a specific set of goods or services. In either case, it is measured as the percentage rate of change of a price index.[1]

Mainstream economists believe that high rates of inflation are caused by high rates of growth of the money supply.[2] Views on the factors that determine moderate rates of inflation are more varied: changes in inflation are sometimes attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services or in available supplies (i.e. changes in scarcity), and sometimes to changes in the supply or demand for money. In the mid-twentieth century, two camps disagreed strongly on the main causes of inflation at moderate rates: the "monetarists" argued that money supply dominated all other factors in determining inflation, while "Keynesians" argued that real demand was often more important than changes in the money supply.

There are many measures of inflation. For example, different price indices can be used to measure changes in prices that affect different people. Two widely known indices for which inflation rates are reported in many countries are the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures consumer prices, and the GDP deflator, which measures price variations associated with domestic production of goods and services.

According to official figures, inflation has touched a 40-month high of 7.41 per cent for the week ended March 29.
The Left parties today lashed out at the UPA government for its "failure" to check rising prices saying it stood helpless before the "monster of market forces" which was responsible for this situation.

I landed in Kolkata just after the demise of USSR. having been involved in nationality movements in Uttarakhand , jharkhand and chhattishgargh I became aware of the dangers ahead as the Indian nation never addressed the nationality question despite AFSPA reigning in Jammu and kashmir with entire North East including Assam. Moreover, continuous refugee influx accross the border and continuous minority persecution in East Bengal endangered the very existence of my community, the dalit Bengali Partition Victim refugees from erstwhile east Bengal and resettled countrywide deprived of citizenship, human rights and civil rights. I wanted to go back to roots. I opted for west Bengal leaving behind my North india base.

I have been dealing with the same people all these years for my Ration and essential commodities. I have detailed price lists since 1991. I don`t want to go to details. I am just asking all those persons who have monthly accounts with general stores and Kirana store or Mudikhana. Please analyse the price hyke syastematically with your personal and family experiencs. The game began with Neoliberal Open Market taking over traditional Market and Production system. The things changed dramatically. Welfare state vanished like a wild dream. public distribution ended. No market control. No Consumer safety. No quality or Price control. All these years, the Budget became quite irrelevant to the objective situation faced by Common man. Common Men deprived of purchasing power, displaced and uprooted from livelihood and native places were brutally ousted of the Sovereign market. sovereign Market took over the State power. MNCs are ruling.

You should remeber the media hype on Electioneering Budgets!
What happened?
Are the common consumers relieved a little bit?
What happns to be the affairs of Indian economy?
The only scale entitled for shining India, the Sensex is falling apart.

No Family planning needed as starvation rates are so high! Medical care is privatised and no one without purchasing capacity may afford treatment nowadays. So happens to be the condition of education and employment. No way for sustaining onself these days. The ruling class is concerned for only previleged classes as security forces and government employees! Cremy layer is entertained at every level as political reservation continues with an infinite brokerproduction. SEZ drive launced Enblock Genocide of Indigenous people.

I visted the local vegetable market today. To my awe, I saw every commodity price multiplied! Please see your shopping list and compare the rates with what you paid last week.

So it is a Budget looking on Vote Bank!

Political parties and the Government, both sides of the Ruling Hegemony are playing for the gallery and it won`t change the situation! We have to feel the heat of Inflation. Only we!

"The government stands helpless before the monster of market forces," CPI National Secretary D Raja said here. He was joined by CPI(M) Politburo member Sitaram Yechury who said the Left would go to the people if the government did not take "relevant steps" to control inflation.

Reacting to Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal's statement terming the inflation as a global phenomenon, Raja said "this is a very callous attitude. The government should have anticipated the situation and taken adequate long and short term measures suggested by the Left parties much earlier".

Sibal had said that the government did not have a "magic wand" to bring down inflation, which was a global phenomenon.

Yechury said that the Left parties had sent detailed notes to the government on controlling prices. "Of course we shared our concerns (with government) ...The point is to make the government take the relevant steps and that is what we wanted them to do and that is what we conveyed to them." "If they are not heeding, then we will go to the people," he said.

Terming soaring inflation rate as a global phenomenon, the government today said that it has no "magic wand" to bring it down immediately though it is taking and will take all possible steps to contain price rise.

"Government has no magic wand to bring down inflation which is now a global phenomenon. Due to rise in prices worldwide, it has become rather an import inflation," Minister of Earth, Science and Technology Kapil Sibal told reporters while briefing the mediapersons after the Cabinet meeting.

Referring to World Bank figures, Sibal said that prices of agricultural commodities have gone up by 73 per cent in the international market during the period between August 2007 to March 2008 period.

It included 88 per cent rise in prices of food products, followed by 74 per cent rise in wheat prices, 72 per cent in rice prices, 71 per cent in fat and oil prices and 35 per cent increase in sugar prices, he said.

"Inflation is at a very high level in all emerging markets such as China (8.7 per cent), Russia (11.9 per cent), Argentina (7.3 per cent) and Turkey (8.1 per cent)," he said, adding the government was taking all necessary steps to contain inflation.

Elaborating on the measures taken by the government to contain inflation, Sibal said state governments have been asked to put limits on stocks of foodgrain.

Ruling out an increase subsidies, he said efforts were being made to contain prices through duty cuts and other measures. The poor people were supported through public distribution system, he added.
The Government today admitted that rising food prices would make the task of containing inflation a more difficult exercise and may hurt economic growth and reforms process, but ruled out any "blind controls" to rein in the increasing rates.

"Efforts to promote reforms and more open economies would be derailed in the face of persistent food shortages and rising food prices...A steep rise in food prices will make inflation control more difficult and can thereby hurt the cause of macro economic stability," the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said at Global Agro Industries Forum here.

"The constituency for economic reforms, so necessary for growth, would also diminish. Pressures would mount for restrictive trade practices," he added.

Wholesale prices-based inflation has already touched over a three-year high of seven per cent and various think- tanks-- IMF, ADB and Prime Minister's Advisory Council-- have projected a moderation in economic growth for this fiscal.

However, Singh said the situation cannot be resolved by returning to an era of "blind controls" and by depressing agriculture's terms of trade as it would hurt farmers' welfare as well as the long-term growth of economy.

"We in India too are deeply concerned about rising global commodity and food prices. Sharply rising food prices can slow down poverty alleviation, impede economic growth and retard employment generation," he said.

While this will harm global economy in general, developing world will be "seriously hurt", Singh said, after receiving the Agricola Award by FAO for his contribution to the farm and social sector.

He said increasing global shift to bio-fuels in the face of galloping oil prices is making the situation of food shortages more complex.

The Prime Minister also said the rising food prices can slow down poverty alleviation and retard employment generation. "We in the developing world will be seriously hurt by it. Efforts to promote reforms and more open economies would be derailed in the face of persistent food shortages and food prices," Singh said He said the world as whole is facing a situation where rising demand for food is not being matched with a similar supply side response.

He said growing demand for bio-fuels due to galloping oil prices is making the situation of food shortages more complex.

The Prime Minister also emphasised on better targeting of subsidies for rural households.

"Farmers and workers seek income, not subsidies. While some subsidies are useful and helpful, especially when targeted to those in distress, what our rural households seek is higher investment in land development, in water management, in seed technologies, in output storage and marketing," Singh said.

The Prime Minister said the problem of rising demand for food not being met by the supply side is not confined to India alone and the entire world is also facing such a situation. Referring to the growing demand for bio-fuels, he said: "The situation is becoming more complex due to the alternative uses being developed for food crops." It is particularly worrisome that the new economics of biofuels is encouraging a shift of land away from food crops, he said and added that for the first time there is a direct linkage between oil prices and food prices.

"Food markets have got interlinked to oil markets, making food policy-making complex and uncertain," Singh noted.

The Prime Minister termed the prospect of food shortages and rising food prices as "most important challenges" and urged the world community to tackle this problem head-on.

"We need a second green revolution. We need new technologies, new organisational structures, new institutional responses and above all a new compact between farmers, technologists, scientists, administrators, businesses, bankers and consumers," he said.

The Prime Minister said that welfare of farming community and livelihood of agricultural workers would be better ensured through higher investment in rural infrastructure and farm development.

"Farmers and workers seek incomes, not subsidies. They seek markets and employment, not hand-outs," he said.

Singh expressed concern over the adverse impact of climate change and global warming on land productivity and water availability and called for concerted global action to deal with the problem.

"We need more equitable, efficient and rational systems and institutions for utilisation of scarce water resources," he said.

The Prime Minister pointed out that small and marginal farms have become an unviable proposition, which, he said, need to be made viable. He sought greater cooperation from donor agencies like International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to provide long-term solutions to the problems faced by small and marginal farmers and particularly for poverty alleviation, risk mitigation and access to finance.

"Collectivisation, corporatisation and land consolidation through land alienation are neither possible nor socially desirable," he noted.

Prime Minister said some of the solutions to the problems of Indian agriculture are to be found outside agriculture.

"In the long run, we have to reduce the pressure of population dependent on agriculture," he said, adding labour- intensive industrialisation was needed to absorb the surplus workforce from rural areas.

He said the Indian food processing sector should target generating new employment besides increasing farmers' income.

"In many developed countries, the strategy of food processing and agro-industries was focused essentially on increasing farmers' incomes without a focus on generating rural employment," Singh noted.

Launching an attack on the BJP, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad today said the increase in prices was the "handiwork" of traders sponsored by the saffron party.

Prasad said there has been a sudden increase in prices after the submission of the report of the 6th Pay Commission and this should be investigated.

"Why have prices gone up all of a sudden after the report of the pay commission came out? There is no shortage of commodities and yet the consumers have to pay more. This is the handiwork of BJP-sponsored traders," he told reporters here.

"This is being done so that we do not do well in elections," Prasad said.

Further criticising the BJP, he said while the saffron party has been attacking the Government over price rise, the states that are under its rule have failed to take steps to control the prices of essential commodities.

"The Centre had empowered the states to take steps to control prices of essential commodities. Only five states have done it so far. And none of the BJP-ruled states have done it," Prasad said.

India inflation nears 4 year high
By Sunil Raman
BBC News

The government has said it will focus on capping price growth
Inflation in India climbed to its highest level in March for almost four years driven by rising metal, food and oil prices, official figures show.

The annual rate of consumer price growth was 7.4% last month, the highest rate since November 2004.

Concerned by rising food prices, India last week announced a ban on exports of non-basmati rice and removed duties on imports of crude edible oils.

On Friday, it banned cement exports and withdrew concessions for steel.

Trade Minister Kamal Nath said inflation control was a priority and more measures would follow.

Poverty measures

Unlike many countries India calculates inflation on factory gate prices or wholesale prices.

Prices paid by consumers in retail shops are higher and the issue of price growth and inflation has become a become sticky political problem with six Indian states going to polls in coming months.

The inflation figures came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said sharply rising food prices could "slow down poverty alleviation, impede economic growth and retard employment generation".

Officials in the Farm Ministry told the BBC that they expect inflation to come under control by the end of April when the wheat harvest picks up.

A harvest of about 75 million tonnes of wheat has been estimated.

Reports of a good harvest in Australia will further dampen world prices, which have been under pressure after extreme weather conditions damaged crops.

The Farm Ministry said that the government had ample rice stocks, and any increase in prices was a result of rice exporting nations announcing a ban.

There were no plans to provide rice at a lower cost to Sri Lanka or African nations.

Ministry officials said that in an election year the government's popularity could be hit by high prices or the perception that prices had risen.

Growing steadily

Communist parties that support the federal government in parliament have again demanded a ban on futures trading in commodities in an effort to keep a limit on price increases.

Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India said that last year the government had banned futures trading in rice, wheat and pulses because of pressure from their parliamentary group.

That move, he said, had helped to check prices then.

But fears of a major economic slowdown have been belied by new industrial production figures out on Friday. Industrial production grew at 8.6% in February 2008 compared with 11% in February 2007.

The government has also revised the January industrial production figure to 5.8%. For the first 11 months of the last fiscal year, industrial growth was 8.7% compared with 11.2% the previous year.

Manufacturing has shown some growth and there has been a slight decline in consumer goods sector in January.

SEE ALSO
Asian states feel rice pinch
03 Apr 08 | South Asia
India introduces rice export ban
01 Apr 08 | South Asia
Food prices spur Indian inflation
22 Feb 08 | Business
Indian motorists face dearer fuel
14 Feb 08 | Business
Indian economy set to decelerate
07 Feb 08 | Business
Indian interest rates unchanged
29 Jan 08 | Business

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Rising fuel prices will add to India's woes
11 Apr 2008, 0249 hrs IST,Nitin Sethi,TNN

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Rising_fuel_prices_will_add_to_Indias_woes/articleshow/2942844.cms

NEW DELHI: With UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation warning that there is no early solution in sight to the global dip in food supply, India could find its attempt to isolate domestic prices from the international market more difficult in times to come.

FAO's data showed that the global food item prices of February and March had increased faster than in the months before. The prices had risen on the FAO price index from a value of below 150 in May 2007 to close to 225, in a rise showing no downturn at any point in the past two years.

While the world has got used to hearing about the wheat scarcity with the Australian crop failure, FAO's data also painted a grim scenario for the other staple: rice. The rice price index of the UN body showed a jump from 129 in January 2007 to 188 in January 2008 pointing to a total supply crash in the food market.

With FAO also predicting that global production of almost all cereals and food commodities might see a stagnation over the next few years, India, facing a low grain offtake from the farmers and again becoming favourable to imports, could find the global market a tough nut to crack.

The World Bank too has warned that the reduced supply was not a short-term phenomenon as has been recorded earlier but a long term drift that would take some years to recover from.

Adding pressure to the global food scenario is bound to be plans by US to double its bio-fuel production from corn and maize by 2015. The US maize crop, which constitutes more than 10% of the global production, was diverted to biofuels in 2007. With US exports making up more than 60% of the global trade in the foodgrain, an increased diversion is bound to squeeze the markets further.

The fear of food crops being diverted to biofuels leading to inflation within India was on Thursday also voiced by the PM, who warned: "It is worrisome that the new economics of biofuels is encouraging a shift of land away from food crops. What this has done is that for the first time, there is a direct linkage between oil prices and food prices."

With the correlation between oil prices and fuel prices getting stronger, the worst hit would be countries like India. With the competition for feedstock soaring prices, there is bound to be a ratcheting up of food prices even in the long term. On the political front, the government would face disquiet from the powerful farmer lobby, if it doesn’t increase the inflation-feeding minimum support price for the crops.

04/11/2008 14:56
INDIA
Indians face record inflation as a result of runaway food prices

http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=11995&size=A
The Indian government tries to keep a lid on prices without harming economic growth. Import taxes on food are scrapped and rice and pulses exports are banned, but the problem is world-wide.

New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Inflation has reached record levels in India as a result of rising food prices. Wholesale prices rose 7.41 per cent in the week ending 29 March over a year before, the highest rise in more than three years, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in New Delhi today, but the jump was even greater for food.

The situation has put the Indian government in a quandary because it has to contain inflation to protect consumers’ purchasing power whilst at the same time favour the development of the service sector and industry.

Experts do not expect the central bank to raise the cash reserve ratio, which has already been done five times since December 2006, for fear of its impact on development. Instead the government might control prices of steel and cement, essential for further growth.

The central bank plans to sell 230 billion rupees (US$ 5.8 billion) of bonds and bills this week, including 90 billion rupees of securities to drain excess money from the banking system.

Fears of inflations have prompted the government to scrap import tax on edible oils and maize as well and ban exports of (non-basmati) rice (basic staple for 65 per cent of the population) and pulses.

But any action seems more and more difficult because the problem is increasingly world-wide. Whatever is done experts expect the price of rice and cereals to rise, partly because Asian government have favoured industrial and service sector development at the expense of agriculture.

The impact is visible to all. In New Delhi for instance the cost of rice jumped 33 per cent (from 12 rupees or 29 US cents a kilo to 16 rupees or 39 cents) in the last two months.

“A steep rise in food prices will make inflation control more difficult,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday. “In most developing countries, food prices are the kingpin of the price structure.” (P

Rapid inflation threatens India's boom times
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3729349.ece

Rhys Blakely, Bombay
Inflation in India has soared to its fastest pace in more than three years, raising the prospect of a tighter monetary policy that would jeopardise the country's fading economic renaissance.

The figures, which are deeply embarrassing to the Indian government and were pounced on by opposition politicians today, come as soaring prices of foodstuffs and industrial raw materials remain at historical highs, fanning inflation across Asia.

Indian wholesale prices rose at a 7.4 per cent annual pace in the week to March 29, up from 7 per cent in the previous week and wrong-footing economists' predictions for a flat reading. As recently as the first week of February the gauge stood at just 4 per cent, well below the central bank's 5 per cent comfort threshold.

In China, Indonesia and Pakistan inflation rates are above 8 per cent. Consumer prices in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, have risen about 24 per cent in the past year, according to Bloomberg, the financial data provider.

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Oil touched a record $112.21 (£56.9) a barrel this week in New York. Wheat prices have more than doubled in Chicago over the past year, and touched a record high of $13.495 a bushel in late February.

Rice, a staple food across South Asia, has increased in price by more than 40 per cent in some markets since January – one of the factors that prompted the World Bank to warn this week that more than 30 countries face the prospect of food riots.

The Indian government, which must call a general election before next May, is hugely sensitive to the rising costs of basic goods. Even small rises in food hit India's army of poor voters hard.

In an effort to temper price rises it has already cut import duties on edible oils and banned the export of pulses and most types of rice - fiscal measures that are providing a fillip for global market prices.

The government has also leaned heavily on steel manufacturers, pressing them into making "voluntary" press cuts or risk mandatory price caps. Today, it withdrew export incentives for goods including cement.

Economists now expect a further hike in the cash reserve ratio - the proportion of deposits commercial lenders need to place with the central bank - before the end of April.

Tighter monetary policy has already contributed to a deceleration in India's economic growth to an 8.4 per cent annual pace in the three months to December, down from an 18-year high of 9.6 per cent in the year to March 31, 2007.

April 11, 2008
Inflation in India is running at a three year high.
Permalink: Inflation in India is running at a three year high. by Peter Charalambous
http://www.investmentmarkets.co.uk/20080411-1883.html

India’s inflation has accelerated which has raised the cause for concern that the central bank may increase interest rates as government bonds fell.

Wholesale food prices have surged by 7.41 percent from last year and it is the rise in commodities and food costs that has forced the Asian governments to find ways to freeze the price hikes.

The Indian government is having to scrap import tax on oils and maize as well as banning all exports of rice and pulses due to the increase in food prices.

Oil is trading at the astronomical price of $112.21, whilst wheat is trading at $13.495 a bushel which is almost double the price from last year.

As a result the central bank may order lenders to make more money available, and the government cannot rule out an increase in the cash reserve ratio.

The focus on monetary policy will most likely be on liquidity management so as to stop this influencing inflation.

During the week India has conducted the biggest sale of debt since this January so as to reduce the supply of money.

The Indian central bank is subsequently planning to sell 230 billion rupees of bonds this week, as well as 90 billion rupees of securities in order to further reduce the money supply in the banking system.

So far key policy rates have been lifted nine times in order to curb inflationary pressures.

Inflation in India

Shooting the messenger
Apr 10th 2008 | DELHI
From The Economist print edition

The Indian government's knee-jerk response to inflation is as worrying as the rising prices

IN COLONIAL times, the Coronation Building in old Delhi was one of the city's most prestigious hotels. Today, it is home to a commodity-futures market. But you would not know it. The Rajdhani Oil and Oilseeds Exchange is hidden among a cluster of small shops and peopled by men in kurta pyjamas, their hair dyed with henna, reclining in the afternoon heat under rusted fans. Over an ageing intercom, they take orders to buy and sell mustard seed and jaggery for delivery one or two months hence. The day's opening and closing prices are chalked on a blackboard.

The blackboard shows that prices of the two commodities have fallen in recent weeks. This will come as a relief to India's policymakers, who are frantically seeking to suppress a nasty bout of commodity-price inflation. On April 4th the Ministry of Commerce and Industry revealed that wholesale-price inflation, the measure most closely watched by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank, rose to 7% in the 12 months to March 22nd, its highest rate since December 2004. This price pressure is worrying. But the government's panicked response to it is even more so.

Behind the jump in inflation were higher prices for fuel, food (including edible oils) and metals. The price of iron ore leapt by 46%. This has spooked the government, which faces elections in several big states as well as a national poll before next spring. In response, it has cut import duties on edible oils and banned the export of pulses and rice (except for basmati rice). It even briefly banned the export of edible oils, such as coconut oil, much to the chagrin of Keralite emigrants to the Gulf, who swear by the stuff to keep their hair black and their joints flexible.

Steelmakers in particular have felt the sharp edge of the government's resolve. The Steel Authority of India (SAIL), a state-owned steelmaker, boasts that “there's a little bit of SAIL in everybody's life”, a slogan that runs above pictures of metal bridges, pipes, jugs and even dog-food bowls. After prices rose by more than 20% in the first three months of the year, everybody's life became a bit dearer. Carmakers and scooter-makers protested to the government. Dog-owners no doubt joined them in spirit.

The government threatened to add steel to its list of 15 “essential commodities”, which would allow it to dictate the production and distribution of the alloy. In response, steelmakers “voluntarily” agreed to cut the prices of steel bars used in construction and the corrugated sheets that poor households use for roofing. But steelmakers complain that they are merely passing on the rising costs of coke and iron ore. They fear being caught between “the two prongs of a pincer”, according to the Indian Steel Alliance, an industry group.

Commodity traders, such as the ones reclining in the Coronation Building, fear they may be next in line. Last year the government banned futures trading in two types of bean, rice and wheat, arguing that speculators were driving up prices, beyond what the fundamentals would dictate. Some in the leftist parties, on whose support the government relies, now argue it should extend the ban to other commodities, such as edible oils and perhaps even iron and steel.

This would be like “shooting the messenger”, argues B.C. Khatua, chairman of the Forward Markets Commission, which regulates futures exchanges. Before they were shut down, he points out, the futures markets conveyed the message that prices of wheat and rice would continue to rise. Sure enough, that is what happened.

Banning futures trading would do little to curb prices, especially for commodities like edible oils that are heavily imported. But it would arrest the development of India's financial system, which is finally growing more sophisticated. Since 2003, the government has allowed trading in future contracts for many commodities. One of the two main exchanges, the Multi Commodity Exchange, averages volumes of over $3 billion a day. The Rajdhani exchange turns over about $20m a month.

Great hopes for such markets were expressed this week in a report by a 12-man committee on financial-sector reform, appointed by the planning commission, and led by Raghuram Rajan, now of the Chicago Graduate School of Business, and formerly chief economist of the IMF. It laments “the knee-jerk reaction to ban [markets] or intervene in them whenever they send unpleasant messages.”

The futures market provides farmers with a sneak preview of the prices they will face in the months ahead, which should allow them to make an informed decision about what to sow. In principle, futures contracts should also allow farmers to lock in a price for their crops, insulating them from the vagaries of the spot market. At the moment, farmers are too small to participate in the market directly. But Mr Rajan's report suggests that small banks could aggregate the demands of farmers up to a practical size.

“Just as it is counter-intuitive to steer in the direction of the skid”, Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University once wrote, “it is difficult to persuade the layman” that the best solution to scarcity is a market price, which encourages supply and discourages demand. As Bajrang Lal Goyal, a trader who joined the Rajdhani exchange 40 years ago, points out, India's winter crop is just days away from hitting the market. If the politicians who bash the futures market could be bothered to look at the message it is conveying, they would see that the prices of several sensitive commodities are already on their way down. Just in time, that is, for the elections.
Global inflation and India

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/04/08/stories/2008040850360900.htm

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Most analyses of accelerating inflation in India emphasise the role of “imported inflation” in driving Indian prices upwards. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh examine the trends in global markets that influence domestic price movements and their implications.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the annual rate of inflation in India having touched 7 per cent on a point-to-point basis during the week-ending March 22, 2008, the search for policies to combat the price rise has begun. One factor seen as making that search difficult is the ostensible role of “imported inflation” in driving the rise in domestic prices.

There is an obvious reason why such an argument arises. Among the products primarily responsible for the current inflation are food products of different kinds, including cereals, intermediates like metals and the universal intermediate, oil.

Of these, the difficulties that high and rising levels of oil prices pose have been known for some time now. Price movements for the two varieties of crude that enter India’s import basket (Chart 1) show that since May 2003 international prices have, despite fluctuations, been on a continuous rise. In the event the prices per barrel of these varieties have moved from less than $25 in May 2003 to close to or well above $100 today.

Real price of oil

This has changed one feature of the oil price scenario that held during much of the last two decades. During those years, despite high nominal prices, the real price of oil (adjusted for increases in the general price level) was far lower than that which prevailed during the 1970s. As Chart 2 shows, when measured by the price-deflated refiner acquisition cost of imported oil in the US, in the years since 1974 the real price of oil was higher than that in 2006 only during a brief period between 1980 and 1982. Since 2006, nominal oil prices having risen further at rates much higher than the average level of prices.

As a result, oil producers are regaining the real price benefits they garnered during the 1979-81 shock. According to one estimate, in terms of current prices, the late 1970s-early 1980s peak in oil prices works out to $100-110 a barrel. That is a figure that we are fast approaching.

Underlying the buoyancy in prices is the closing gap between global petroleum demand and supply at a time when the spare capacity is more or less fully utilised. Much of the increase in demand is coming from China, but that is affecting stockpiles everywhere. This trend, combined with the uncertainty in West Asia resulting from the occupation of Iraq and the standoff in Iran, has created a situation where any destabilising influence — such as political uncertainty and attacks on the oil supply chain in Nigeria — triggers a sharp rise in prices.

What needs noting, however, is that prices are where they are because speculators have exploited these fundamentals. It is known that energy markets have attracted substantial financial investor interest since 2004, but especially after the recent decline in stock markets and in the value of the dollar. Investors in search of new investment targets have moved into speculative investments in commodities in general and oil in particular. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which is normally held responsible for all oil price increases, has repeatedly asserted that oil has crossed the $100-a-barrel mark not because of a shortage of supply but because of financial speculation.

Views similar to those from OPEC have been expressed by more disinterested sources as well. As far back as April 29, 2006, The New York Times had reported that: “In the latest round of furious buying, hedge funds and other investors have helped propel crude oil prices from around $50 a barrel at the end of 2005 to a record of $75.17 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.”

According to that report, oil contracts held mostly by hedge funds had risen to twice the amount held five years ago. Such transactions are clearly speculative in nature.

While the disruption caused by the US occupation of Iraq, other geopolitical factors and the speculation that followed have played a role in the case of oil, what explains the recent increase in other global commodity prices, especially food articles and metals? Chart 3 (based on IMF data) shows that, except for agricultural raw materials whose prices have increased very little, all the other commodity groups have shown sharp rises in price.

The rise in price levels for metals was the earliest in the recent surge, with the weighted average of metals prices increasing sharply from the last quarter of 2005, and almost doubling in the two-year period to February 2008. Coal prices more than doubled last year, thereby showing a faster rise than even the oil price. Food prices, like agricultural raw materials, had shown only a modest increase until early 2007. But since then they have zoomed, such that the IMF data show more than 40 per cent increase in world food prices over 2007.

Food price index

The FAO food price index, which includes national prices as well as those in cross-border trade, suggests that the average index for 2007 was nearly 25 per cent above the average for 2006. Apart from sugar, nearly every other food crop has shown very significant increases in price in world trade over 2007, and the latest evidence suggests that this trend has continued and even accelerated in the first few months of 2008. The net result is that globally the prices of many basic commodities have been rising faster than they ever did during the last three decades.

It has been argued that these developments are largely demand driven, being the result of several years of rapid global growth and the voracious demand from some fast-growing countries such as China. Certainly there is some element of truth in this. And to the extent that this is true, it implies that the world economy is heading back to the late-1960s and early-1970s scenario wherein rapid and prolonged growth came up against an inflationary barrier. Capitalism’s success over the last two decades was its ability to prevent such an outcome, political economy processes that restrained the wage and income demands of workers and primary producers. But clearly there are limits to such a process, and these limits are now being reached.

If this were the only cause of the recent commodity price inflation, it would not necessarily be of such concern to policymakers, because it could then be expected that a slowing down of overall growth would simultaneously reduce inflation. It would also reflect some recovery of the drastically reduced bargaining power of workers and primary producers. But there are other, more worrying tendencies in operation, that suggest that the current global inflationary process has other factors pushing it which will not be so easily controlled.

Forces behind the rise

To understand this, it is necessary to examine the forces behind the price rises for different commodities. In the case of food, there are more than just demand forces at work, although it is certainly true that rising incomes in Asia and other parts of the developing world have led to increased demand for food. Five major aspects affecting supply conditions have been crucial in changing global market conditions for food crops.

First, there is the impact of high oil prices, which affect agricultural costs directly because of the significance of energy as an input in the cultivation process itself (through fertiliser and irrigation costs) as well as in transporting food. Across the world, governments have reduced protection and subsidies on agriculture, which means that high costs of energy directly translate into higher costs of cultivation, and therefore higher prices of output.

Second, there is the impact of both oil prices and government policies in the US, Europe, Brazil and elsewhere that have promoted bio-fuels as an alternative to petroleum. This has led to significant shifts in acreage as well as use of certain grains. For example, in 2006 the US diverted more than 20 per cent of its maize production to the production of ethanol; Brazil used half of its sugarcane production to make bio-fuel, and the European Union used the greater part of its vegetable oil production as well as imported vegetable oils, to make bio-fuel. This has naturally reduced the available land for producing food.

Policy neglect

Third, the impact of policy neglect of agriculture over the past two decades is finally being felt. The prolonged agrarian crisis in many parts of the developing world; the shifts in acreage from food crops to cash crops relying on purchased inputs; the excessive use of groundwater and inadequate attention to preserving or regenerating land and soil quality; the lack of attention to relevant agricultural research and extension; the overuse of chemical inputs that have long-run implications for both safety and productivity; the ecological implications of both pollution and climate change, including desertification and loss of cultivable land: all these are issues that have been highlighted by analysts but largely ignored by policymakers in most countries.

Reversing these processes is possible but will take time and substantial public investment, so until then global supply conditions will remain problematic.

Fourth, there is the impact of changes in market structure, which allow for greater international speculation in commodities. It is often assumed that rising food prices automatically benefit farmers, but this is far from the case, especially as the global food trade has become more concentrated and vertically integrated.

A small number of agribusiness companies worldwide increasingly control all aspects of cultivation and distribution, from supplying inputs to farmers to buying crops and even in some cases to retail food distribution. This means that marketing margins are large and increasing, so that direct producers do not get the benefits of increases expect with a time lag and even then not to the full extent. This concentration also enables greater speculation in food, with more centralised storage.

Financial speculators

Finally, primary commodity markets are also attracting financial speculators. As the global financial system remains fragile with the continuing implosion of the US housing finance market, commodity speculation is increasingly emerging as an important alternative investment market. Such speculation by large banks and financial companies is in both agricultural and non-agricultural commodities, and explains at least partly why the very recent period has seen such sharp hikes in price.

Commodity speculation has also affected the minerals and metals sector. For these commodities, it is evident that recent price increases have been largely the result of increased demand, especially from China and other rapidly growing developing countries, but also from the US and European Union.

A positive fallout of the recent growth in demand and diversification of sources of demand is that it has allowed primary metals producing countries, especially in Africa, to benefit from competition to extract better prices and conditions for their mined products. But there is also the unfortunate reality that higher mineral prices have rarely if ever translated into better incomes and living conditions of the local people, even if they may benefit the aggregate economy of the country concerned.

At any rate, metal prices are high and likely to remain so because of the growing imbalance between world supply and demand. A reduction in global output growth rates would definitely have some dampening effect on prices from their current highs, but the basic imbalance is likely to continue for some time. This is also because there has been a neglect of investment in this sector as well, so that building up new capacity will take time given the long gestation period involved in investments for metal production.

Implications for India

So the medium-term outlook for global commodity prices, while uncertain, is that they are likely to remain high even if the world economy slows down in terms of output growth. What does this mean for India? Until the 1990s, both producers and consumers in India were relatively sheltered from the impact of such global tendencies because of a complex system of trade restrictions, public procurement and distribution and policy emphasis on at least food self-sufficiency.

The liberalising policies that began in the early 1990s have rendered all of that history, since one explicit aim of the reform strategy was to bring Indian prices closer in line to world prices. Countries like India seeking to manage this effect of global speculation on the prices of a universal intermediate like oil have to decide how important it is to insulate the domestic economy and the domestic consumer from its effect.

Given the huge revenues being derived from duties on oil products, one way this can be done is to forego duty while holding oil prices. This would require compensating for revenue losses with taxes in other areas which a growing economy can contemplate. But the Government appears unwilling to take this route, increasing pressure to hike oil prices further and aggravate an inflationary tendency that is already proving to be economically and politically damaging.

Ineffective strategy

This reticence till recently to proactively insulate the domestic economy has meant, that both producers and consumers are now more or less directly affected adversely by global trends.

The Government’s response to the domestic price rise, which is already creating panic in official corridors in an election year, has been to reduce or eliminate import duties on several food items such as edible oils, so as to allow imports to bring the price down.

But that is a short-sighted and probably ineffective strategy. It provides direct competition to Indian farmers producing oilseeds, even as they suffer rapidly rising costs. It sends confused signals not only to farmers for the next sowing season, but also to consumers, and leaves the field open for domestic speculators as well because the imports are not under public supervision but left to private traders.

Most of all, given the tendency of international commodity prices noted here, it will not solve the basic problem of rising inflation in such commodities. Instead, it will make the Indian economy even more prone to the volatility and inflationary pressure of world markets. In fact, the increases in prices in India have not been as sharp for some commodities largely because of the vestiges of the intervention era.

Thus, prices of some commodities, like rice for example, have gone up less than world prices only because exports have been prohibited. This does suggest that the Indian economy cannot hope to remain insulated from these global trends without much more proactive policies that rely substantially on government intervention in several areas.

In the case of food, this essentially requires a more determined effort to increase the viability of food cultivation, to improve the productivity of agriculture through public measures, and to expand and strengthen the public system of procurement and distribution.

For other commodities too, it is now evident that a laissez faire system is simply not good enough, and public intervention and regulation of markets is essential.

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Political parties and the Government, both sides of the Ruling Hegemony are playing for the gallery and it won`t change the situation! We have to feel the heat of Inflation. Only we! You should remeber the media hype on Electioneering Budgets! What happened? Are the common consumers relieved a little bit? What happns to be the affairs of Indian economy? The only scale entitled for shining India, the Sensex is falling apart. No Family planning needed as starvation rates are so high! Medical care is privatised and no one without purchasing capacity may afford treatment nowadays. So happens to be the condition of education and employment. No way for sustaining onself these days. The ruling class is concerned for only previleged classes as security forces and government employees! Cremy layer is entertained at every level as political reservation continues with an infinite brokerproduction. SEZ drive launced Enblock Genocide of Indigenous people. Palash Biswas Contact: Palash C Biswas, C/O Mrs Arati Roy, Gosto Kanan, Sodepur, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-033-25659551 Email: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com Inflation From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Inflation is a rise in the general level of prices over time. It may also refer to a rise in the prices of a specific set of goods or services. In either case, it is measured as the percentage rate of change of a price index.[1] Mainstream economists believe that high rates of inflation are caused by high rates of growth of the money supply.[2] Views on the factors that determine moderate rates of inflation are more varied: changes in inflation are sometimes attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services or in available supplies (i.e. changes in scarcity), and sometimes to changes in the supply or demand for money. In the mid-twentieth century, two camps disagreed strongly on the main causes of inflation at moderate rates: the "monetarists" argued that money supply dominated all other factors in determining inflation, while "Keynesians" argued that real demand was often more important than changes in the money supply. There are many measures of inflation. For example, different price indices can be used to measure changes in prices that affect different people. Two widely known indices for which inflation rates are reported in many countries are the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures consumer prices, and the GDP deflator, which measures price variations associated with domestic production of goods and services. According to official figures, inflation has touched a 40-month high of 7.41 per cent for the week ended March 29. The Left parties today lashed out at the UPA government for its "failure" to check rising prices saying it stood helpless before the "monster of market forces" which was responsible for this situation. I landed in Kolkata just after the demise of USSR. having been involved in nationality movements in Uttarakhand , jharkhand and chhattishgargh I became aware of the dangers ahead as the Indian nation never addressed the nationality question despite AFSPA reigning in Jammu and kashmir with entire North East including Assam. Moreover, continuous refugee influx accross the border and continuous minority persecution in East Bengal endangered the very existence of my community, the dalit Bengali Partition Victim refugees from erstwhile east Bengal and resettled countrywide deprived of citizenship, human rights and civil rights. I wanted to go back to roots. I opted for west Bengal leaving behind my North india base. I have been dealing with the same people all these years for my Ration and essential commodities. I have detailed price lists since 1991. I don`t want to go to details. I am just asking all those persons who have monthly accounts with general stores and Kirana store or Mudikhana. Please analyse the price hyke syastematically with your personal and family experiencs. The game began with Neoliberal Open Market taking over traditional Market and Production system. The things changed dramatically. Welfare state vanished like a wild dream. public distribution ended. No market control. No Consumer safety. No quality or Price control. All these years, the Budget became quite irrelevant to the objective situation faced by Common man. Common Men deprived of purchasing power, displaced and uprooted from livelihood and native places were brutally ousted of the Sovereign market. sovereign Market took over the State power. MNCs are ruling. You should remeber the media hype on Electioneering Budgets! What happened? Are the common consumers relieved a little bit? What happns to be the affairs of Indian economy? The only scale entitled for shining India, the Sensex is falling apart. No Family planning needed as starvation rates are so high! Medical care is privatised and no one without purchasing capacity may afford treatment nowadays. So happens to be the condition of education and employment. No way for sustaining onself these days. The ruling class is concerned for only previleged classes as security forces and government employees! Cremy layer is entertained at every level as political reservation continues with an infinite brokerproduction. SEZ drive launced Enblock Genocide of Indigenous people. I visted the local vegetable market today. To my awe, I saw every commodity price multiplied! Please see your shopping list and compare the rates with what you paid last week. So it is a Budget looking on Vote Bank! Political parties and the Government, both sides of the Ruling Hegemony are playing for the gallery and it won`t change the situation! We have to feel the heat of Inflation. Only we! "The government stands helpless before the monster of market forces," CPI National Secretary D Raja said here. He was joined by CPI(M) Politburo member Sitaram Yechury who said the Left would go to the people if the government did not take "relevant steps" to control inflation. Reacting to Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal's statement terming the inflation as a global phenomenon, Raja said "this is a very callous attitude. The government should have anticipated the situation and taken adequate long and short term measures suggested by the Left parties much earlier". Sibal had said that the government did not have a "magic wand" to bring down inflation, which was a global phenomenon. Yechury said that the Left parties had sent detailed notes to the government on controlling prices. "Of course we shared our concerns (with government) ...The point is to make the government take the relevant steps and that is what we wanted them to do and that is what we conveyed to them." "If they are not heeding, then we will go to the people," he said. Terming soaring inflation rate as a global phenomenon, the government today said that it has no "magic wand" to bring it down immediately though it is taking and will take all possible steps to contain price rise. "Government has no magic wand to bring down inflation which is now a global phenomenon. Due to rise in prices worldwide, it has become rather an import inflation," Minister of Earth, Science and Technology Kapil Sibal told reporters while briefing the mediapersons after the Cabinet meeting. Referring to World Bank figures, Sibal said that prices of agricultural commodities have gone up by 73 per cent in the international market during the period between August 2007 to March 2008 period. It included 88 per cent rise in prices of food products, followed by 74 per cent rise in wheat prices, 72 per cent in rice prices, 71 per cent in fat and oil prices and 35 per cent increase in sugar prices, he said. "Inflation is at a very high level in all emerging markets such as China (8.7 per cent), Russia (11.9 per cent), Argentina (7.3 per cent) and Turkey (8.1 per cent)," he said, adding the government was taking all necessary steps to contain inflation. Elaborating on the measures taken by the government to contain inflation, Sibal said state governments have been asked to put limits on stocks of foodgrain. Ruling out an increase subsidies, he said efforts were being made to contain prices through duty cuts and other measures. The poor people were supported through public distribution system, he added. The Government today admitted that rising food prices would make the task of containing inflation a more difficult exercise and may hurt economic growth and reforms process, but ruled out any "blind controls" to rein in the increasing rates. "Efforts to promote reforms and more open economies would be derailed in the face of persistent food shortages and rising food prices...A steep rise in food prices will make inflation control more difficult and can thereby hurt the cause of macro economic stability," the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh said at Global Agro Industries Forum here. "The constituency for economic reforms, so necessary for growth, would also diminish. Pressures would mount for restrictive trade practices," he added. Wholesale prices-based inflation has already touched over a three-year high of seven per cent and various think- tanks-- IMF, ADB and Prime Minister's Advisory Council-- have projected a moderation in economic growth for this fiscal. However, Singh said the situation cannot be resolved by returning to an era of "blind controls" and by depressing agriculture's terms of trade as it would hurt farmers' welfare as well as the long-term growth of economy. "We in India too are deeply concerned about rising global commodity and food prices. Sharply rising food prices can slow down poverty alleviation, impede economic growth and retard employment generation," he said. While this will harm global economy in general, developing world will be "seriously hurt", Singh said, after receiving the Agricola Award by FAO for his contribution to the farm and social sector. He said increasing global shift to bio-fuels in the face of galloping oil prices is making the situation of food shortages more complex. The Prime Minister also said the rising food prices can slow down poverty alleviation and retard employment generation. "We in the developing world will be seriously hurt by it. Efforts to promote reforms and more open economies would be derailed in the face of persistent food shortages and food prices," Singh said He said the world as whole is facing a situation where rising demand for food is not being matched with a similar supply side response. He said growing demand for bio-fuels due to galloping oil prices is making the situation of food shortages more complex. The Prime Minister also emphasised on better targeting of subsidies for rural households. "Farmers and workers seek income, not subsidies. While some subsidies are useful and helpful, especially when targeted to those in distress, what our rural households seek is higher investment in land development, in water management, in seed technologies, in output storage and marketing," Singh said. The Prime Minister said the problem of rising demand for food not being met by the supply side is not confined to India alone and the entire world is also facing such a situation. Referring to the growing demand for bio-fuels, he said: "The situation is becoming more complex due to the alternative uses being developed for food crops." It is particularly worrisome that the new economics of biofuels is encouraging a shift of land away from food crops, he said and added that for the first time there is a direct linkage between oil prices and food prices. "Food markets have got interlinked to oil markets, making food policy-making complex and uncertain," Singh noted. The Prime Minister termed the prospect of food shortages and rising food prices as "most important challenges" and urged the world community to tackle this problem head-on. "We need a second green revolution. We need new technologies, new organisational structures, new institutional responses and above all a new compact between farmers, technologists, scientists, administrators, businesses, bankers and consumers," he said. The Prime Minister said that welfare of farming community and livelihood of agricultural workers would be better ensured through higher investment in rural infrastructure and farm development. "Farmers and workers seek incomes, not subsidies. They seek markets and employment, not hand-outs," he said. Singh expressed concern over the adverse impact of climate change and global warming on land productivity and water availability and called for concerted global action to deal with the problem. "We need more equitable, efficient and rational systems and institutions for utilisation of scarce water resources," he said. The Prime Minister pointed out that small and marginal farms have become an unviable proposition, which, he said, need to be made viable. He sought greater cooperation from donor agencies like International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to provide long-term solutions to the problems faced by small and marginal farmers and particularly for poverty alleviation, risk mitigation and access to finance. "Collectivisation, corporatisation and land consolidation through land alienation are neither possible nor socially desirable," he noted. Prime Minister said some of the solutions to the problems of Indian agriculture are to be found outside agriculture. "In the long run, we have to reduce the pressure of population dependent on agriculture," he said, adding labour- intensive industrialisation was needed to absorb the surplus workforce from rural areas. He said the Indian food processing sector should target generating new employment besides increasing farmers' income. "In many developed countries, the strategy of food processing and agro-industries was focused essentially on increasing farmers' incomes without a focus on generating rural employment," Singh noted. Launching an attack on the BJP, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad today said the increase in prices was the "handiwork" of traders sponsored by the saffron party. Prasad said there has been a sudden increase in prices after the submission of the report of the 6th Pay Commission and this should be investigated. "Why have prices gone up all of a sudden after the report of the pay commission came out? There is no shortage of commodities and yet the consumers have to pay more. This is the handiwork of BJP-sponsored traders," he told reporters here. "This is being done so that we do not do well in elections," Prasad said. Further criticising the BJP, he said while the saffron party has been attacking the Government over price rise, the states that are under its rule have failed to take steps to control the prices of essential commodities. "The Centre had empowered the states to take steps to control prices of essential commodities. Only five states have done it so far. And none of the BJP-ruled states have done it," Prasad said. India inflation nears 4 year high By Sunil Raman BBC News The government has said it will focus on capping price growth Inflation in India climbed to its highest level in March for almost four years driven by rising metal, food and oil prices, official figures show. The annual rate of consumer price growth was 7.4% last month, the highest rate since November 2004. Concerned by rising food prices, India last week announced a ban on exports of non-basmati rice and removed duties on imports of crude edible oils. On Friday, it banned cement exports and withdrew concessions for steel. Trade Minister Kamal Nath said inflation control was a priority and more measures would follow. Poverty measures Unlike many countries India calculates inflation on factory gate prices or wholesale prices. Prices paid by consumers in retail shops are higher and the issue of price growth and inflation has become a become sticky political problem with six Indian states going to polls in coming months. The inflation figures came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said sharply rising food prices could "slow down poverty alleviation, impede economic growth and retard employment generation". Officials in the Farm Ministry told the BBC that they expect inflation to come under control by the end of April when the wheat harvest picks up. A harvest of about 75 million tonnes of wheat has been estimated. Reports of a good harvest in Australia will further dampen world prices, which have been under pressure after extreme weather conditions damaged crops. The Farm Ministry said that the government had ample rice stocks, and any increase in prices was a result of rice exporting nations announcing a ban. There were no plans to provide rice at a lower cost to Sri Lanka or African nations. Ministry officials said that in an election year the government's popularity could be hit by high prices or the perception that prices had risen. Growing steadily Communist parties that support the federal government in parliament have again demanded a ban on futures trading in commodities in an effort to keep a limit on price increases. Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India said that last year the government had banned futures trading in rice, wheat and pulses because of pressure from their parliamentary group. That move, he said, had helped to check prices then. But fears of a major economic slowdown have been belied by new industrial production figures out on Friday. Industrial production grew at 8.6% in February 2008 compared with 11% in February 2007. The government has also revised the January industrial production figure to 5.8%. For the first 11 months of the last fiscal year, industrial growth was 8.7% compared with 11.2% the previous year. Manufacturing has shown some growth and there has been a slight decline in consumer goods sector in January. SEE ALSO Asian states feel rice pinch 03 Apr 08 | South Asia India introduces rice export ban 01 Apr 08 | South Asia Food prices spur Indian inflation 22 Feb 08 | Business Indian motorists face dearer fuel 14 Feb 08 | Business Indian economy set to decelerate 07 Feb 08 | Business Indian interest rates unchanged 29 Jan 08 | Business RELATED INTERNET LINKS India Commerce and Industry Department The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites TOP BUSINESS STORIES BA postpones long-haul move to T5 US consumer mood at 26-year low New warning over mortgage lending Rising fuel prices will add to India's woes 11 Apr 2008, 0249 hrs IST,Nitin Sethi,TNN http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Rising_fuel_prices_will_add_to_Indias_woes/articleshow/2942844.cms NEW DELHI: With UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation warning that there is no early solution in sight to the global dip in food supply, India could find its attempt to isolate domestic prices from the international market more difficult in times to come. FAO's data showed that the global food item prices of February and March had increased faster than in the months before. The prices had risen on the FAO price index from a value of below 150 in May 2007 to close to 225, in a rise showing no downturn at any point in the past two years. While the world has got used to hearing about the wheat scarcity with the Australian crop failure, FAO's data also painted a grim scenario for the other staple: rice. The rice price index of the UN body showed a jump from 129 in January 2007 to 188 in January 2008 pointing to a total supply crash in the food market. With FAO also predicting that global production of almost all cereals and food commodities might see a stagnation over the next few years, India, facing a low grain offtake from the farmers and again becoming favourable to imports, could find the global market a tough nut to crack. The World Bank too has warned that the reduced supply was not a short-term phenomenon as has been recorded earlier but a long term drift that would take some years to recover from. Adding pressure to the global food scenario is bound to be plans by US to double its bio-fuel production from corn and maize by 2015. The US maize crop, which constitutes more than 10% of the global production, was diverted to biofuels in 2007. With US exports making up more than 60% of the global trade in the foodgrain, an increased diversion is bound to squeeze the markets further. The fear of food crops being diverted to biofuels leading to inflation within India was on Thursday also voiced by the PM, who warned: "It is worrisome that the new economics of biofuels is encouraging a shift of land away from food crops. What this has done is that for the first time, there is a direct linkage between oil prices and food prices." With the correlation between oil prices and fuel prices getting stronger, the worst hit would be countries like India. With the competition for feedstock soaring prices, there is bound to be a ratcheting up of food prices even in the long term. On the political front, the government would face disquiet from the powerful farmer lobby, if it doesn?t increase the inflation-feeding minimum support price for the crops. 04/11/2008 14:56 INDIA Indians face record inflation as a result of runaway food prices http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=11995&size=A The Indian government tries to keep a lid on prices without harming economic growth. Import taxes on food are scrapped and rice and pulses exports are banned, but the problem is world-wide. New Delhi (AsiaNews/Agencies) ? Inflation has reached record levels in India as a result of rising food prices. Wholesale prices rose 7.41 per cent in the week ending 29 March over a year before, the highest rise in more than three years, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in New Delhi today, but the jump was even greater for food. The situation has put the Indian government in a quandary because it has to contain inflation to protect consumers? purchasing power whilst at the same time favour the development of the service sector and industry. Experts do not expect the central bank to raise the cash reserve ratio, which has already been done five times since December 2006, for fear of its impact on development. Instead the government might control prices of steel and cement, essential for further growth. The central bank plans to sell 230 billion rupees (US$ 5.8 billion) of bonds and bills this week, including 90 billion rupees of securities to drain excess money from the banking system. Fears of inflations have prompted the government to scrap import tax on edible oils and maize as well and ban exports of (non-basmati) rice (basic staple for 65 per cent of the population) and pulses. But any action seems more and more difficult because the problem is increasingly world-wide. Whatever is done experts expect the price of rice and cereals to rise, partly because Asian government have favoured industrial and service sector development at the expense of agriculture. The impact is visible to all. In New Delhi for instance the cost of rice jumped 33 per cent (from 12 rupees or 29 US cents a kilo to 16 rupees or 39 cents) in the last two months. ?A steep rise in food prices will make inflation control more difficult,? Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said yesterday. ?In most developing countries, food prices are the kingpin of the price structure.? (PB) Rapid inflation threatens India's boom times http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article3729349.ece Rhys Blakely, Bombay Inflation in India has soared to its fastest pace in more than three years, raising the prospect of a tighter monetary policy that would jeopardise the country's fading economic renaissance. The figures, which are deeply embarrassing to the Indian government and were pounced on by opposition politicians today, come as soaring prices of foodstuffs and industrial raw materials remain at historical highs, fanning inflation across Asia. Indian wholesale prices rose at a 7.4 per cent annual pace in the week to March 29, up from 7 per cent in the previous week and wrong-footing economists' predictions for a flat reading. As recently as the first week of February the gauge stood at just 4 per cent, well below the central bank's 5 per cent comfort threshold. In China, Indonesia and Pakistan inflation rates are above 8 per cent. Consumer prices in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, have risen about 24 per cent in the past year, according to Bloomberg, the financial data provider. Related Links Fear of rice riots as Far East demand surges Food prices rise beyond means of the poorest India takes on China over Africa?s riches Oil touched a record $112.21 (£56.9) a barrel this week in New York. Wheat prices have more than doubled in Chicago over the past year, and touched a record high of $13.495 a bushel in late February. Rice, a staple food across South Asia, has increased in price by more than 40 per cent in some markets since January ? one of the factors that prompted the World Bank to warn this week that more than 30 countries face the prospect of food riots. The Indian government, which must call a general election before next May, is hugely sensitive to the rising costs of basic goods. Even small rises in food hit India's army of poor voters hard. In an effort to temper price rises it has already cut import duties on edible oils and banned the export of pulses and most types of rice - fiscal measures that are providing a fillip for global market prices. The government has also leaned heavily on steel manufacturers, pressing them into making "voluntary" press cuts or risk mandatory price caps. Today, it withdrew export incentives for goods including cement. Economists now expect a further hike in the cash reserve ratio - the proportion of deposits commercial lenders need to place with the central bank - before the end of April. Tighter monetary policy has already contributed to a deceleration in India's economic growth to an 8.4 per cent annual pace in the three months to December, down from an 18-year high of 9.6 per cent in the year to March 31, 2007. April 11, 2008 Inflation in India is running at a three year high. Permalink: Inflation in India is running at a three year high. by Peter Charalambous http://www.investmentmarkets.co.uk/20080411-1883.html India?s inflation has accelerated which has raised the cause for concern that the central bank may increase interest rates as government bonds fell. Wholesale food prices have surged by 7.41 percent from last year and it is the rise in commodities and food costs that has forced the Asian governments to find ways to freeze the price hikes. The Indian government is having to scrap import tax on oils and maize as well as banning all exports of rice and pulses due to the increase in food prices. Oil is trading at the astronomical price of $112.21, whilst wheat is trading at $13.495 a bushel which is almost double the price from last year. As a result the central bank may order lenders to make more money available, and the government cannot rule out an increase in the cash reserve ratio. The focus on monetary policy will most likely be on liquidity management so as to stop this influencing inflation. During the week India has conducted the biggest sale of debt since this January so as to reduce the supply of money. The Indian central bank is subsequently planning to sell 230 billion rupees of bonds this week, as well as 90 billion rupees of securities in order to further reduce the money supply in the banking system. So far key policy rates have been lifted nine times in order to curb inflationary pressures. Inflation in India Shooting the messenger Apr 10th 2008 | DELHI From The Economist print edition The Indian government's knee-jerk response to inflation is as worrying as the rising prices IN COLONIAL times, the Coronation Building in old Delhi was one of the city's most prestigious hotels. Today, it is home to a commodity-futures market. But you would not know it. The Rajdhani Oil and Oilseeds Exchange is hidden among a cluster of small shops and peopled by men in kurta pyjamas, their hair dyed with henna, reclining in the afternoon heat under rusted fans. Over an ageing intercom, they take orders to buy and sell mustard seed and jaggery for delivery one or two months hence. The day's opening and closing prices are chalked on a blackboard. The blackboard shows that prices of the two commodities have fallen in recent weeks. This will come as a relief to India's policymakers, who are frantically seeking to suppress a nasty bout of commodity-price inflation. On April 4th the Ministry of Commerce and Industry revealed that wholesale-price inflation, the measure most closely watched by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank, rose to 7% in the 12 months to March 22nd, its highest rate since December 2004. This price pressure is worrying. But the government's panicked response to it is even more so. Behind the jump in inflation were higher prices for fuel, food (including edible oils) and metals. The price of iron ore leapt by 46%. This has spooked the government, which faces elections in several big states as well as a national poll before next spring. In response, it has cut import duties on edible oils and banned the export of pulses and rice (except for basmati rice). It even briefly banned the export of edible oils, such as coconut oil, much to the chagrin of Keralite emigrants to the Gulf, who swear by the stuff to keep their hair black and their joints flexible. Steelmakers in particular have felt the sharp edge of the government's resolve. The Steel Authority of India (SAIL), a state-owned steelmaker, boasts that ?there's a little bit of SAIL in everybody's life?, a slogan that runs above pictures of metal bridges, pipes, jugs and even dog-food bowls. After prices rose by more than 20% in the first three months of the year, everybody's life became a bit dearer. Carmakers and scooter-makers protested to the government. Dog-owners no doubt joined them in spirit. The government threatened to add steel to its list of 15 ?essential commodities?, which would allow it to dictate the production and distribution of the alloy. In response, steelmakers ?voluntarily? agreed to cut the prices of steel bars used in construction and the corrugated sheets that poor households use for roofing. But steelmakers complain that they are merely passing on the rising costs of coke and iron ore. They fear being caught between ?the two prongs of a pincer?, according to the Indian Steel Alliance, an industry group. Commodity traders, such as the ones reclining in the Coronation Building, fear they may be next in line. Last year the government banned futures trading in two types of bean, rice and wheat, arguing that speculators were driving up prices, beyond what the fundamentals would dictate. Some in the leftist parties, on whose support the government relies, now argue it should extend the ban to other commodities, such as edible oils and perhaps even iron and steel. This would be like ?shooting the messenger?, argues B.C. Khatua, chairman of the Forward Markets Commission, which regulates futures exchanges. Before they were shut down, he points out, the futures markets conveyed the message that prices of wheat and rice would continue to rise. Sure enough, that is what happened. Banning futures trading would do little to curb prices, especially for commodities like edible oils that are heavily imported. But it would arrest the development of India's financial system, which is finally growing more sophisticated. Since 2003, the government has allowed trading in future contracts for many commodities. One of the two main exchanges, the Multi Commodity Exchange, averages volumes of over $3 billion a day. The Rajdhani exchange turns over about $20m a month. Great hopes for such markets were expressed this week in a report by a 12-man committee on financial-sector reform, appointed by the planning commission, and led by Raghuram Rajan, now of the Chicago Graduate School of Business, and formerly chief economist of the IMF. It laments ?the knee-jerk reaction to ban [markets] or intervene in them whenever they send unpleasant messages.? The futures market provides farmers with a sneak preview of the prices they will face in the months ahead, which should allow them to make an informed decision about what to sow. In principle, futures contracts should also allow farmers to lock in a price for their crops, insulating them from the vagaries of the spot market. At the moment, farmers are too small to participate in the market directly. But Mr Rajan's report suggests that small banks could aggregate the demands of farmers up to a practical size. ?Just as it is counter-intuitive to steer in the direction of the skid?, Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University once wrote, ?it is difficult to persuade the layman? that the best solution to scarcity is a market price, which encourages supply and discourages demand. As Bajrang Lal Goyal, a trader who joined the Rajdhani exchange 40 years ago, points out, India's winter crop is just days away from hitting the market. If the politicians who bash the futures market could be bothered to look at the message it is conveying, they would see that the prices of several sensitive commodities are already on their way down. Just in time, that is, for the elections. Global inflation and India http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/04/08/stories/2008040850360900.htm -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most analyses of accelerating inflation in India emphasise the role of ?imported inflation? in driving Indian prices upwards. In this edition of Macroscan, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh examine the trends in global markets that influence domestic price movements and their implications. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the annual rate of inflation in India having touched 7 per cent on a point-to-point basis during the week-ending March 22, 2008, the search for policies to combat the price rise has begun. One factor seen as making that search difficult is the ostensible role of ?imported inflation? in driving the rise in domestic prices. There is an obvious reason why such an argument arises. Among the products primarily responsible for the current inflation are food products of different kinds, including cereals, intermediates like metals and the universal intermediate, oil. Of these, the difficulties that high and rising levels of oil prices pose have been known for some time now. Price movements for the two varieties of crude that enter India?s import basket (Chart 1) show that since May 2003 international prices have, despite fluctuations, been on a continuous rise. In the event the prices per barrel of these varieties have moved from less than $25 in May 2003 to close to or well above $100 today. Real price of oil This has changed one feature of the oil price scenario that held during much of the last two decades. During those years, despite high nominal prices, the real price of oil (adjusted for increases in the general price level) was far lower than that which prevailed during the 1970s. As Chart 2 shows, when measured by the price-deflated refiner acquisition cost of imported oil in the US, in the years since 1974 the real price of oil was higher than that in 2006 only during a brief period between 1980 and 1982. Since 2006, nominal oil prices having risen further at rates much higher than the average level of prices. As a result, oil producers are regaining the real price benefits they garnered during the 1979-81 shock. According to one estimate, in terms of current prices, the late 1970s-early 1980s peak in oil prices works out to $100-110 a barrel. That is a figure that we are fast approaching. Underlying the buoyancy in prices is the closing gap between global petroleum demand and supply at a time when the spare capacity is more or less fully utilised. Much of the increase in demand is coming from China, but that is affecting stockpiles everywhere. This trend, combined with the uncertainty in West Asia resulting from the occupation of Iraq and the standoff in Iran, has created a situation where any destabilising influence ? such as political uncertainty and attacks on the oil supply chain in Nigeria ? triggers a sharp rise in prices. What needs noting, however, is that prices are where they are because speculators have exploited these fundamentals. It is known that energy markets have attracted substantial financial investor interest since 2004, but especially after the recent decline in stock markets and in the value of the dollar. Investors in search of new investment targets have moved into speculative investments in commodities in general and oil in particular. The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which is normally held responsible for all oil price increases, has repeatedly asserted that oil has crossed the $100-a-barrel mark not because of a shortage of supply but because of financial speculation. Views similar to those from OPEC have been expressed by more disinterested sources as well. As far back as April 29, 2006, The New York Times had reported that: ?In the latest round of furious buying, hedge funds and other investors have helped propel crude oil prices from around $50 a barrel at the end of 2005 to a record of $75.17 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.? According to that report, oil contracts held mostly by hedge funds had risen to twice the amount held five years ago. Such transactions are clearly speculative in nature. While the disruption caused by the US occupation of Iraq, other geopolitical factors and the speculation that followed have played a role in the case of oil, what explains the recent increase in other global commodity prices, especially food articles and metals? Chart 3 (based on IMF data) shows that, except for agricultural raw materials whose prices have increased very little, all the other commodity groups have shown sharp rises in price. The rise in price levels for metals was the earliest in the recent surge, with the weighted average of metals prices increasing sharply from the last quarter of 2005, and almost doubling in the two-year period to February 2008. Coal prices more than doubled last year, thereby showing a faster rise than even the oil price. Food prices, like agricultural raw materials, had shown only a modest increase until early 2007. But since then they have zoomed, such that the IMF data show more than 40 per cent increase in world food prices over 2007. Food price index The FAO food price index, which includes national prices as well as those in cross-border trade, suggests that the average index for 2007 was nearly 25 per cent above the average for 2006. Apart from sugar, nearly every other food crop has shown very significant increases in price in world trade over 2007, and the latest evidence suggests that this trend has continued and even accelerated in the first few months of 2008. The net result is that globally the prices of many basic commodities have been rising faster than they ever did during the last three decades. It has been argued that these developments are largely demand driven, being the result of several years of rapid global growth and the voracious demand from some fast-growing countries such as China. Certainly there is some element of truth in this. And to the extent that this is true, it implies that the world economy is heading back to the late-1960s and early-1970s scenario wherein rapid and prolonged growth came up against an inflationary barrier. Capitalism?s success over the last two decades was its ability to prevent such an outcome, political economy processes that restrained the wage and income demands of workers and primary producers. But clearly there are limits to such a process, and these limits are now being reached. If this were the only cause of the recent commodity price inflation, it would not necessarily be of such concern to policymakers, because it could then be expected that a slowing down of overall growth would simultaneously reduce inflation. It would also reflect some recovery of the drastically reduced bargaining power of workers and primary producers. But there are other, more worrying tendencies in operation, that suggest that the current global inflationary process has other factors pushing it which will not be so easily controlled. Forces behind the rise To understand this, it is necessary to examine the forces behind the price rises for different commodities. In the case of food, there are more than just demand forces at work, although it is certainly true that rising incomes in Asia and other parts of the developing world have led to increased demand for food. Five major aspects affecting supply conditions have been crucial in changing global market conditions for food crops. First, there is the impact of high oil prices, which affect agricultural costs directly because of the significance of energy as an input in the cultivation process itself (through fertiliser and irrigation costs) as well as in transporting food. Across the world, governments have reduced protection and subsidies on agriculture, which means that high costs of energy directly translate into higher costs of cultivation, and therefore higher prices of output. Second, there is the impact of both oil prices and government policies in the US, Europe, Brazil and elsewhere that have promoted bio-fuels as an alternative to petroleum. This has led to significant shifts in acreage as well as use of certain grains. For example, in 2006 the US diverted more than 20 per cent of its maize production to the production of ethanol; Brazil used half of its sugarcane production to make bio-fuel, and the European Union used the greater part of its vegetable oil production as well as imported vegetable oils, to make bio-fuel. This has naturally reduced the available land for producing food. Policy neglect Third, the impact of policy neglect of agriculture over the past two decades is finally being felt. The prolonged agrarian crisis in many parts of the developing world; the shifts in acreage from food crops to cash crops relying on purchased inputs; the excessive use of groundwater and inadequate attention to preserving or regenerating land and soil quality; the lack of attention to relevant agricultural research and extension; the overuse of chemical inputs that have long-run implications for both safety and productivity; the ecological implications of both pollution and climate change, including desertification and loss of cultivable land: all these are issues that have been highlighted by analysts but largely ignored by policymakers in most countries. Reversing these processes is possible but will take time and substantial public investment, so until then global supply conditions will remain problematic. Fourth, there is the impact of changes in market structure, which allow for greater international speculation in commodities. It is often assumed that rising food prices automatically benefit farmers, but this is far from the case, especially as the global food trade has become more concentrated and vertically integrated. A small number of agribusiness companies worldwide increasingly control all aspects of cultivation and distribution, from supplying inputs to farmers to buying crops and even in some cases to retail food distribution. This means that marketing margins are large and increasing, so that direct producers do not get the benefits of increases expect with a time lag and even then not to the full extent. This concentration also enables greater speculation in food, with more centralised storage. Financial speculators Finally, primary commodity markets are also attracting financial speculators. As the global financial system remains fragile with the continuing implosion of the US housing finance market, commodity speculation is increasingly emerging as an important alternative investment market. Such speculation by large banks and financial companies is in both agricultural and non-agricultural commodities, and explains at least partly why the very recent period has seen such sharp hikes in price. Commodity speculation has also affected the minerals and metals sector. For these commodities, it is evident that recent price increases have been largely the result of increased demand, especially from China and other rapidly growing developing countries, but also from the US and European Union. A positive fallout of the recent growth in demand and diversification of sources of demand is that it has allowed primary metals producing countries, especially in Africa, to benefit from competition to extract better prices and conditions for their mined products. But there is also the unfortunate reality that higher mineral prices have rarely if ever translated into better incomes and living conditions of the local people, even if they may benefit the aggregate economy of the country concerned. At any rate, metal prices are high and likely to remain so because of the growing imbalance between world supply and demand. A reduction in global output growth rates would definitely have some dampening effect on prices from their current highs, but the basic imbalance is likely to continue for some time. This is also because there has been a neglect of investment in this sector as well, so that building up new capacity will take time given the long gestation period involved in investments for metal production. Implications for India So the medium-term outlook for global commodity prices, while uncertain, is that they are likely to remain high even if the world economy slows down in terms of output growth. What does this mean for India? Until the 1990s, both producers and consumers in India were relatively sheltered from the impact of such global tendencies because of a complex system of trade restrictions, public procurement and distribution and policy emphasis on at least food self-sufficiency. The liberalising policies that began in the early 1990s have rendered all of that history, since one explicit aim of the reform strategy was to bring Indian prices closer in line to world prices. Countries like India seeking to manage this effect of global speculation on the prices of a universal intermediate like oil have to decide how important it is to insulate the domestic economy and the domestic consumer from its effect. Given the huge revenues being derived from duties on oil products, one way this can be done is to forego duty while holding oil prices. This would require compensating for revenue losses with taxes in other areas which a growing economy can contemplate. But the Government appears unwilling to take this route, increasing pressure to hike oil prices further and aggravate an inflationary tendency that is already proving to be economically and politically damaging. Ineffective strategy This reticence till recently to proactively insulate the domestic economy has meant, that both producers and consumers are now more or less directly affected adversely by global trends. The Government?s response to the domestic price rise, which is already creating panic in official corridors in an election year, has been to reduce or eliminate import duties on several food items such as edible oils, so as to allow imports to bring the price down. But that is a short-sighted and probably ineffective strategy. It provides direct competition to Indian farmers producing oilseeds, even as they suffer rapidly rising costs. It sends confused signals not only to farmers for the next sowing season, but also to consumers, and leaves the field open for domestic speculators as well because the imports are not under public supervision but left to private traders. Most of all, given the tendency of international commodity prices noted here, it will not solve the basic problem of rising inflation in such commodities. Instead, it will make the Indian economy even more prone to the volatility and inflationary pressure of world markets. In fact, the increases in prices in India have not been as sharp for some commodities largely because of the vestiges of the intervention era. Thus, prices of some commodities, like rice for example, have gone up less than world prices only because exports have been prohibited. This does suggest that the Indian economy cannot hope to remain insulated from these global trends without much more proactive policies that rely substantially on government intervention in several areas. In the case of food, this essentially requires a more determined effort to increase the viability of food cultivation, to improve the productivity of agriculture through public measures, and to expand and strengthen the public system of procurement and distribution. For other commodities too, it is now evident that a laissez faire system is simply not good enough, and public intervention and regulation of markets is essential. More Stories on : Economy | Economy Gulf Times Growth is the key, don't kill it Economic Times, India - 9 Apr 2008 The result, naturally, is to push up wheat prices ? precisely when India seeks to import wheat. So India?s attempt to dampen rice prices in India end up ... 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Annihilate Whatsoever Indiginous happens to be the Latest Marxist Corporate Agenda for Capitalist Development, Agressive Industrialisation

Palash Biswas

Annihilate Whatsoever Indiginous happens to be the Latest Marxist Corporate Agenda for Capitalist Development, Agressive Industrialisation!

Neither BJP nor Congress, It`s CPIM, the party boasting to fight for refugees, launched the Nationwide Partition Victims deportation Drive!

Gestapo head Buddha was Behind Adwani and Pranab, Gestapo Head Buddha, the worthiest ally of Salem, DOWS,Kissinger, Bush and MNCs, builders, promoters in general, has been the Mastermind behind all anti People Enactment including the notorious Citizenship amendment act.

With Communism losing its appeal worldwide, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) is worried over its growing failure to attract younger men and women into its ranks. In a self-critical organisational report, the country's dominant Communist party is urging its activists to focus on inducting more youngsters, women, Dalits, tribals and also Muslims. At the 19th Left, BJP target govt. on price rice, line up protests
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Communism & Advani
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The CPI (M) congress will provide the direction for this vital task, he said. Accepting the need for a “third alternative,” Mr Karat said the party congress ...

Newstrack India CPI (M) to encircle Congress on Price rise
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On Sunday, the first day of deliberations, the party congress passed a resolution - introduced by West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and ...
CPI(M) proud of opposing Indo-US strategic alliance: Karat
Hindu, India - 29 Mar 2008
Coimbatore (PTI): Under attack from various quarters for blocking the Indo-US nuclear deal, the CPI(M) on Saturday said it was proud of opposing India's ...

party congress under way in Coimbatore, the report has expressed grave concern over dipping membership. But what is bothering it more is its inability to attract more youngsters into its fold.

CPIM had been very cleverly playing the political game of Scientific demographic vote bank readjustment. it first claimed to lead the partition victim East Bengal refugees in forties and fifties in their demand to get rehabilitation in west Bengal. Jyoti Basu and Samar Mukherjee everytime suggested to rehabilitate the refugees in Sundarvan. The violently opposed Dr Bidhan Roy for sending the Bengali refugees to Dandakarany, Andaman and Elsewhere. When CPIM won the 1977 elections and Jyoti basu became the Chief Minister, he sent out Ministers Ram Chatterjee and Kiranmoy Nanda countrywide with other prominent party leaders to mobilise the resettled partition victim. Earlier basu himself visitin Bhilai met all the Refugee leaders including Satish mandal and asked them to come over to West Bengal.

Invited by Basu, the Marxist chief Minister Bengali dalit refugees from all four states of Dandakaranya landed in the Marich Jhanpi Island of Sundervana. contrary to CPIM plan, the refugees allied with RSP and Jantadal. They refused to join CPIM. CPIM had to liberate Marichjhanpi. The first Genocide was enacted in Left Regime right in January, 1979. Then, present Gestapo Head Buddhadeb was the minister of Culture and Information. He declared marichjhanpi liberated as he declared Sunrise after Nandigram Recapture . It is quite an amusing why the minister of culture is promoted as Chief Minister though he held the ministry of home and Police at that time. We have to research th e corelation of cultuer and police as well. It reminds us the gestapo setup og Hitler , well represented by present day Marxists.

Marxist never tried for an initiative to stop minority persecution in East Bengal causing continuous Refugee Influx. contrarily the CPIM regime persecuted taslima nasrin , the writer of Lajja. Marxists used Hindu as well as Muslim Refugees as their Vote bank. Virtually they never need any other community voting them as long as their Muslim and Refugee vote bank remain intact.

The latest dalit Agenda aims to escalate the All India Party Base in paper. But, in fact, the Bengali nad Karala Brahmins never allowed to frame any party base in North India as they always were busy to rule the Party in the best interst of the ruling Class. CPIM was never interested to escalate or hold bases in North India. Rather, CPIM led by Basu and surjeet played the alliance game with Pro US lobbies countrywide lebeled with colorful diffeent ideologies and parties. Reality is this that CPIM is much more interested to justify its global agenda of Annihlate whatsoever Indigenous in the best interset of corporate Imperialism. AS it poses secular and progressive and opposses War against terrorism while allying with Bush and kissinger, USA and Israel, the Marxists are masters of subversion. The dalit agenda is aimed at reorganise the SC ST OBC Vote bank in wset Bengal and Kerala threatened by Nandigram and singur Insurrection!

"The party should recruit young cadre from States and districts and deploy them in areas where it is weak," the report says.

It also asks its cadres to induct more women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and minorities but sounds a caution: "The selection and promotion of cadres should be strictly on the basis of his or her political organisational capacity and performance."

In the report, yet to be made public, the CPM has done a detailed self-assessment.

It says the percentage of party members nationally up to the age of 30 years is 16.77 per cent, between 31 and 40 years 29.31, between 41 and 50 years 31.77, between 51 and 60 years 13.79 and between 61 to 70 years is 6.82 per cent.

This is despite the fact that 35 per cent of members were recruited after 2002. "More efforts should be made to recruit youths," it says.

Although the CPI-M claims to be champion of the weaker and the downtrodden, only 19.93 per cent of party members were Dalits and tribals constitute only 6.43 per cent.

In States like Kerala, one of the three strongholds of the CPM, the percentage of Dalit members actually came down from 15.86 per cent in 2004 to 14.97 per cent last year.

Members belonging to the working class constitute 32.36 per cent, followed by farm workers (23.76), poor peasants (18.93), middle peasants (10.5), rich peasants (0.59), middle class (11.46) and landlords constituted 0.08 per cent.

The CPM is also concerned about the low number of Muslims joining the party.

Although Muslims vote for the party in Kerala and West Bengal in large numbers, the support is not translating into party members, the report says.

Muslims constitute 10.22 per cent of party members.

While Kerala showed a marginal increase in Muslim membership (9.44 per cent in 2004 to 10.35 in 2007), in West Bengal it fell to 14.67 per cent from 14.9 in 2004.

Women constitute 11.93 per cent of members. The report says that 2.69 per cent of party members are postgraduates and 10.06 per cent graduates.

The report also criticises local units for failing to collect the customary levy from its members.

"Some committees failed to collect levy from members as fixed by the central committee. There are also reports that a section of party members are giving false information about their income to give less levy than is due," it says.

"The payment of levy is a matter related to the political-organisational consciousness of the party member. The State committees should take appropriate steps to collect levy from members."

The oppression of Dalits has been going on for over 3000 years. They are segregated in all spheres of social life. But now CPI (M) has extended their helping hand and the dalits in Andhra Pradesh have stood up against social injustice.

The report of the movement and its effect has been tabled in the party congress, held at Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. John Wesley, a party organiser and leader of ‘Pairatya Sangham’ said that the movement for social justice is a follow up action of the decision taken in the last 18th party congress. The movement has got a momentum, not only in Andhra Pradesh, in other states like Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana as well. The movement had its spontaneity but simultaneously, the party had to provide its expertise in monitoring and controlling a democratic movement. John disclosed that in one incident, poison has been mixed in the water of the well so that the dalits cannot use the same any more.

The report placed in the party congress says that the CPI (M) has been accumulating different mass organisations and social forces now. A few intellectuals have also come forward to stand behind the movement. John Wesley informed that the intellectuals have supported the cause and admitted that in an open world the discrimination on castes should not be given upper hand. Those who favour this, should go for hibernation.

The party leaders confirmed that the movement for social justice would not stop until a favourable situation is created.

THEY DID not have the right to drink tea in the glasses being used by the upper caste. They could walk the road usually used by the upper caste, but without having shoes. They had to come down the cycle and bow before the people belonging to upper caste. The washer men and the barbers were cautioned, not to provide any service to them. And most amazingly, they were not allowed to enter the temples, builtby them only. They are Dalits of Andhra Pradesh under Congress rule.

The situation however, is fast changing under the pressure of democratic movement launched by Communist Party of India (CPI(M).

The party is not strong in Andhra Pradesh and in fact the CPI(M) has failed to extend its wings in any other states, other than its strongholds like West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala. But the developments evidenced in Andhra Pradesh, recently prove that the party is initiating its support base in the state.

Very recently, a rally of the dalits under the leadership of CPI(M) entered a local temple made by them. The same movement was organised in Anantapur but the temple authority had closed the temple in protest of the dalits’ entrance over there.

In several places, dalits were barred to use the drinking water of the village wells. The CPI(M) leaders stood by them and launched movement. In the tea stalls they stood guard to the dalits so that the discrimination in using glasses can be wiped out.

The party leaders and workers are roaming around the villages. They are even conducting meetings and standing in favour of social justice. They are preaching against the inhuman traditions, being followed for years.

On the third day of its 19th Congress here on Monday, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) expressed resentment over the inability of the United Progressive Alliance government to confront Hindutva forces. It demanded legislation to deal with communal violence and to provide compensation to the victims and rehabilitate them.
A resolution adopted at the Congress observed: “It is most unfortunate, therefore, that the UPA government, whose formation was welcomed and made possible by secular forces, has been unable to confront the Hindutva forces and, on the contrary, has adopted a vacillating position.”

In 2002, West Bengal regemented ruling Brahminical Hegemony gestapo Head met the Fascist Pro American Zionist then Union Home Minister lal Krishna Adwani in his office and complained why he never mentioned the situation of West Bengal in reference to ISI activities.The Marxist Capitalist Chief Minister raised the issue of Madrsas in the border areas of west Bengal allegedly involved in anti national activities. Bhattacharya then pointed out the continuous flow of uncontrolled Refugee Influx accross the border and demographic changes in North East and West Bengal. The notorious duo made the plan to eject out the dalit Partion Victim Bengali refugeesscattered and resettled as rehabilitated nationwide out of Indian Geopolitics. Buddha was quite a prompt to deny his stance on Madrasa Issues as the sensitive Muslim Vote Bank in West Bengal threatened to distance itself from the Psedo Secular Left Front. Immidiately the marxists launched a damage control campaign attacking the sangh Parivar to appease the Muslims who vote En Block in west Bengal infavour of the Left Front.
But Buddha kept quiet in reference to Dual Citizenship Act. Media was unaware and even the MPs, Ministers and MLAs were ignorant as the Standing committee Chairman Pranab Mukherjee posted the proposed Dual Citizenship Amendment Bill on Net. Pranab did not call any refugee orgs or individual contesting and passed on the Bill. In Parliament, BJP plus Congress as well as CPIM passed the Bill without any significant discussion. The Act signed by the President cancelled the provision of citizenship by Birth. It on the other hand offered citizenship to NRIs of Indian roots. A NRI contested last Gujrat Assembelly Elections. But with a single stroke all partition victim Bengli refugee rehabiliated and resettled countrywide were deprived of Citizenship.

According to the new act, whoever crossed the border without valid passport Visa after 14 th July, 1948 happens to be an illegal foreign infiltrator. It is to be noted that Visa and Passport were introduced for Pakistan only in 1952. But no body asked asingle quetion.

In West Bengal, Dalit Smanyay Samiti, A CPIM open front launched for dalit Vote bank mobilisation campaigned against the Bill and CPIM leaders blamed the BJP and Congerss. Nationwide, CPIM leaders told that the BJP had done this. Since all Bengali speaking Muslims working and residing out of Bengal felt the heat of the deportation drive, specially in New Delhi where VHP claimed to deport 26 lac bangladeshies, in Mumbai where Togria challanges Bal thackray to throw out five lac bangladeshies and in Gujrat, the land of Genocide. CPIM leaders lost no time to launch a campaign to mobilise the dalit Bengali refugees and Muslims as well against this deportation drive. In 2006, CPIM organised a dalit Conference of Bengali refugees outside Bengal. They demanded SC status for Namoshudra Community. ( Ninty percent of the dalit Bengali refugee ejected out of East begal dalit Base and the most militant activists of national dalit Movement before Independence headed by Ambedkar and Jogendra Nath Mandal belong to this community. The ruling hegemony in bengal thus ensured Power for the Brhmins in Independent India with partition of India.) CPIM fought the Uttaranchal Elections wooing the namoshudra Refugees and failed badly. They lost deposit everywhere as refugees never believed them. Now, in Coimbtur, CPIM agenda targets these Namoshudras to have some seats in Chhattishgargh, Jharkhand, Orissa, MP, UP, maharashtra, Andhra and tamilnadu.

In west Bengal, CPIM tamed all namoshudra leaders who licked the Bottom of the ruling Class all these thirty years after marichjhanpi Genocide. All refugees invited, brought, massacred and ejected out of Bengal in the Sundarvana Island were bonafied Indian citizens who were rehabiliated in Dandkaranya Project spanning four states Maharashtra, United MP, Orissa and Andhra or were sheltered in Five Transit camps in Chattishgarg (MP). All of them crossed the border in 1964 or much before. As the Kendrapara bengali Refugees settled there in 1950s and they happen to be the partition victims of Noakhali.

Moreover in Nandigram, no victim happns to be any caste Hindu. All victims happen to be SC, OBC or Muslims. But CPIM succeeded to keep all SC ST OBC and Muslim leaders with it. Opposition, on the other hand never cared for them.Nor the Brahminical Intelligentsia or media. Sidikullah Chowdhury was heading the Nandigram Insurrection but he was trapped to oppose Taslima Nasrin and thus, sidelined. Now sidikullah is dismissed from his General Secretary status in jamait Ul Hind.

All SC ST Muslim leaders including ministers, MPS and MLAs supported the Notorious Citizenship amendment act. No one protested. But they claim to have protested. This is a classic example of Marxist Betrayal.

In Coimbtur, CPIM speaks the language of Ambedkar. They claim to lead anti Capitalist movement but they have always sided with Pro US lobby in Indian politics since Nehru Indira days. They allied with congress while Congress itself Americanised, Zionised after the collapse of soviet Union. They protest neoliberalism and all economic policies of the UPA government but CPIM Coimbtur congress endorsed the Buddha ways of Capitalist development and agressive Industrialisation. Buddha has become the greatest Icon of CPIM after Basu`s retirement. Buddha is the hotmost marxist Brand in Post Modern Manusmriti Hindu Zionist White apartheid Galaxy Order led by US corporate Imperialists!

Alleging that the UPA government’s minority welfare programmes are ‘far from adequate’ the CPI(M)’s nineteenth congress on Monday resolved that the Centre should take ‘concrete steps’ with adequate allocations to empower minority communities through education, employment and ‘‘wherever required land reforms and land distribution.’’ The party has also reiterated its stand that the Dalit Christians and Muslims should be granted with the SC status.

‘‘The government has failed to table the report of the Ranganath Commission on the question of granting scheduled caste to Dalit Christians and Muslims,’’ the resolution, passed by the Congress delegates here, said. It added that the Planning Commission and the Centre have not the CPI(M)’s demand for a sub plan to minorities. The allocation of Rs 500 crore in the recent budget has also been termed as ‘far from adequate’ by the party.

Another resolution condemned the Sangh Parivar for ‘polarising’ the society on communal lines. It demanded immediate passage of the proposed legislation to deal with communal violence and compensation and rehabilitation of the victims. The party criticised the UPA for its ‘failure to refer’ the Gujarat genocide cases to the CBI.

Briefing reporters here on the day’s proceedings at the Congress, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said that his party would co-ordinate with non-NDA, non-Congress parties to launch a ‘nationwide protest’ against price rise. ‘‘We will not allow the government to make the Forward Contract Regulation Ordinance an Act. We will oppose FDI or FIIs in future trading,’’ Karat added.

A day after China sought India’s support on the Tibet issue, Karat on Monday warned that those who are supporting the independent Tibet are doing a great disservice to India. ‘‘Those who want to join this chorus for an independent Tibet in India will be doing a great disservice to our own country. Are we going to support a free Nagaland? A free Jammu and Kashmir and other secessionist demands?’’ he asked.

Though maintained silence on the decision not to invite the Sri Lankan Leftist party Janata Vimukti Perumana for the Congress, he said that it is not necessary to invite all Leftist parties to the function.

Speedy delivery of compensation

This position was seen in the government’s unwillingness to punish those guilty of complicity in communal rioting and carnage and to enable access to justice, rehabilitation and compensation for the victims. The government should draft a Bill and get it passed at the earliest to deal with communalism and ensure speedy delivery of compensation to the victims, the resolution said.

One of the four major areas of focus of the political resolutions was that of sparing no effort at isolating the BJP-RSS combine, CPI (M) general secretary Prakash Karat said while briefing reporters. A total of five resolutions were adopted by the party Congress on Monday.

The failure of the Congress State governments had enabled the BJP to win the elections in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and retain power in Gujarat.

The resolution on Hindutva forces sought to draw a contrast between the approaches of the Centre and the Left front governments in West Bengal, Tripura and Kerala in handling communalism. It said the party Congress took pride in the record of these governments in maintaining communal harmony despite the fact that the communal and fundamentalist forces were actively engaged in fomenting tension and clashes.

At the same time, the BJP-ruled States witnessed attacks on religious minorities and government programmes were saffronised.

Communist patriarch Jyoti Basu held a clandestine meeting with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani when the National Front was in power although publicly the Communists loathed the BJP, Advani says in his autobiography.

Advani has said in his ‘My Life, My Country’ that the former West Bengal chief minister sought a meeting with him and Vajpayee because he felt that the multi-party National Front government led by V P Singh was not functioning well.

But Basu laid a pre-condition: the meeting had to be under cover. "No one should know about our meeting. Especially people in my party would not like it," Advani quoted Basu as saying.

"One day Jyoti Basu sent a message to us from Calcutta through a common friend. This government is not functioning properly. I feel the three of us - Atalji, you and I - should meet to discuss the situation. Why don't we meet at Viren Shah's residence in Delhi?" Shah, a successful Mumbai-based industrialist, a friend of both Advani and Basu, played the emissary.

"Atalji and I welcomed the idea of an informal dinner meeting," Advani has written. "Nevertheless, we were a bit puzzled. We conveyed our response to the intermediary."

In their response to Shah, the BJP leaders said: "We thank Jyoti babu for his suggestion. If he is interested in meeting us, we are prepared to go to Kolkata to meet him there. Otherwise, if he wants the meeting to take place in Delhi, he is most welcome to come to either Atalji's house or my house for dinner."

The meeting finally took place at Shah's residence.

"But to me it was yet another instance of the hypocritical outlook and conduct of the Communists, especially those belonging to the CPI-M," Advani has written.

There was, however, one Communist leader who Advani says he greatly admired - Indrajit Gupta of the Communist Party of India (CPI). "The person who impressed me most was Indrajit Gupta. He was a man of impeccable integrity and great simplicity, besides being an outstanding parliamentarian," Advani has said.

The BJP veteran has only bitter words for the CPI-M. "In contrast, the CPI-M leaders were always conscious of being politically correct in their dealings with us."

V P Singh, then heading the Janata Dal, became prime minister in December 1989, with the backing of the mutually antagonistic BJP and the Left. His government collapsed less than a year later after the BJP withdrew its legislative support.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani and Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav met secretly in 1999 to prevent Congress president Sonia Gandhi from becoming prime minister, sources close to Yadav and former defence minister George Fernandes have confirmed.
Advani caused a sensation by revealing in his book, My Country, My Life, released here on Wednesday, that he and Yadav - otherwise supposedly sworn political foes - met soon after the Atal Behari Vajpayee government lost parliamentary majority and Gandhi tried to cobble a new coalition.
Advani disclosed that Fernandes organised his meeting with Yadav at the Sujan Singh Park residence of Samata Party chief Jaya Jaitley, a confidante of Fernandes, on the night of April 20-21, 1999. The BJP veteran said Jaitley drove him in her car to the venue.
One of those who knew about the meeting said: "Every bit of Advani’s description of the meeting with Mulayam Singh Yadav is a faithful account of the events" that unfolded soon after the Vajpayee government collapsed.
According to another source, Samajwadi Party MP Mohan Singh did the spadework for the meeting. But Mohan Singh denied he was any way linked to the Advani-Yadav talks.
Mohan Singh, a long-time associate of Fernandes, said: "I have no idea about all this. I am not aware of any such meeting."
As a former defence minister, Yadav lived opposite Fernandes’ 3, Krishna Menon Marg bungalow.
The Advani-revealed drama took place after the Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government lost parliamentary majority by a single vote after the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) joined forces with the Congress and its allies.
Thereafter, all non-NDA parties got together to work out a consensus to forge a new government.
With his aversion for the Congress known, Yadav called a meeting of non-Congress and non-NDA leaders at his residence and suggested that then West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu be prime minister. But Basu and his Communist Party of India (Marxist) rejected the idea.
Gandhi went in the meantime to then president K R Narayanan and staked claim to forming a new government, assuming that all those groups that had voted against the Vajpayee government would back her.
That was when Yadav gave Narayanan a letter saying his party would not support a government led by Gandhi. Eventually, fresh elections took place and the Vajpayee-led NDA returned to power with more seats.
The sources said that before Fernandes telephoned Advani to arrange a meeting with Yadav, Fernandes himself had two or three meetings with Yadav.
One source said: "I don’t know where they met. But I know they met."
Despite repeated attempts, IANS could not reach Fernandes or Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh.
However, a Fernandes aide said that Advani’s disclosures, amid speculation that the Congress and the Samajwadi Party may be preparing to bury their long-time rivalry, would not have any impact on political developments.
The source said: "Surely Sonia Gandhi knew about the meeting all along. That was one of the reasons for the bitterness between Sonia and Mulayam. If they are coming close today, it is because of their political compulsions."
l Aiming to improve his ties with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Gandhi, Advani yesterday made an unusual gesture - he visited them at their homes on the occasion of the Holi festival and presented them with copies of his autobiography.
The visits came two days after the ruling Congress accused Advani of making no effort to reach out to the two leaders.
Sources close to the prime minister said Advani met Singh at his residence to greet him on the occasion of Holi.
Advani also went over to Gandhi’s 10 Janpath residence here. Congress Party sources confirmed the meeting but refused to divulge any details.
In an interview with Times Now television channel on Thursday, Advani admitted there was no communication between him and Gandhi. He also said it was hurting his equations with Singh.
"It is unfortunate that I have no communication with Sonia Gandhi. Poor relations with her affect my equations with the prime minister," he said, hoping his ties with her would improve.
In response, the Congress said he had never made efforts to reach out to the two leaders.- IANS

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen has found a friend in the BJP. Leader of the opposition LK Advani said she was a victim of "religious persecution" in her native country and demanded that the centre extend her visa, which is expiring on February 15.

"I am shocked and outraged at media reports that the noted Bengali writer, Taslima Nasreen, has been kept in virtual house arrest at a secret place in Delhi and, worse still, that her health is affected by poor medical care.

Both the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre and the CPI(M)-led Left Front government in West Bengal are responsible for her plight. They are guilty of practising the most perverse kind of politics of vote bank and appeasement of religious extremism," Advani said.

Advani said he had heard from reliable sources she was being pressurised by the UPA government to leave India. The BJP leader marshaled out figures to suggest that it was ironic that the Congress-Communist combine, which has actively colluded in the influx of 12,05,3,950 illegal Bangladeshi migrants (as on 31 December 2001) in Assam, Bengal and other parts of the country, "cannot give protection to a single hapless woman who is a victim of religious persecution in her own country.

Many of these infiltrators have been given not only shelter but also ration cards and voting rights". "I demand that Nasreen be allowed to lead a normal life in West Bengal. It is the responsibility of the Centre and state governments to ensure her personal security," he said.

THE LEFT parties staged a Dharna on Tuesday (Mar 18), at about 11AM against rising prices at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, which is a common place for protest by political parties and other organizations to air their grievances and press their demands. However, most political parties wake up to the call of the elections and the protests by the Left parties like CPM, CPI, RSP, etc, alongwith the Left affiliated ‘Akhil Bharatiya Khet Mazdoor Union’ against rising prices with impractical demands for increasing subsidies should also be seen in the same light.

After the budget in which the UPA government gave relief to millions of farmers condoning loans of farmers having less than two hectares of land, it appeared to almost every one that the Lok Sabha elections, which are otherwise due in 2009 are round the corner. This was evident when after the presentation of the budget the Congress dared the Left parties again over the nuclear treaty with America and it seemed that the Congress had completed its homework now and may be preparing to make brisk activities at the Congress headquarters.

The Bharatiya Janta Party on its part was ready with Advani, gearing up to try his luck to become India’s Prime Minister at a time when the most natural choice of his party, Atal Behari Vajpayee had announced his retirement. Advani wanted to put a rubber stamp of Bharat Ratna on Vajpayee’s retirement so that ways are cleared for him to try his luck. He was also well up in arms against UPA government’s failure to protect people from terrorism, as an election plank. His preparations for hectic schedule of rallies all over the country along with his Hitler friend Modi were however, shown red flag. The intelligence reports that there was danger to both the party leaders.

The Congress again flip-flopped and Defence minister Pranab Mukherji stated within 48 hours that without proper understanding with the Left Front, the government might not opt for elections. Sonia reiterated last week by saying that immediate elections are ruled out. The relief to farmers on loan did send a wave of jubilations all over the farmer communities, but not all were pleased.

For instance, it was reported in the media that farmers of some states have an average of seven acres land, which was more than the restricted two hectares (5 acres) and as such these farmers had nothing to smile at. However, Rahul Gandhi has put up a very pragmatic and intelligent point that the limit of 5 acres should not be for the whole country, but it should vary from state to state and the relevant recommendation should come from the states themselves.

He also rightly raised the question of the variety of fertilities of land pieces in various regions and also pointed out to Vidarbha, where many farmers’ suicides became a nightmare for the governments in Maharashtra and at centre. There the media raised the question of ‘where will the funds come from’ and also some public interest litigation, which the apex court simply rejected saying that the budget was yet to be passed and as such the PIL could not be entertained till proper time.

The Left Front was lucky enough in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections when it got a record 60 seats which they could never have imagined, thanks to the false ‘India Shining’ slogan of the erstwhile Vajpayee led National Democratic Alliance government and the overdose of disinvestment storm by NDA’s disinvestment minister Arun Shourie. It so happened that un-pragmatic romance with liberalisation cost SM Krishna his Karnataka government, Chandrababu Naidu his Andhra government and Digvijay Singh his MP government and all these topplings were over smarted by Vajpayee government’s fiasco in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

But perhaps nobody has forgotten an angry AB Bardhan appearing on the Television channels immediately after it became clear that the Congress led UPA government was going to form the government.

When questioned by a reporter over disinvestment, Bardhan said in his usual unpleasant and angry mannerism – "Bhaad mein jaye disinvestment aur Arun Shourie ki ministry" (to hell with disinvestment and Arun Shourie’s ministry). His single statement resulted in the bloodshed in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and trillions of rupees were drained off. Interestingly, since it had become clear by now that Manmohan Singh would be taking oath as India’s next Prime Minister, the outgoing NDA government’s Finance Minister Jaswant Singh mischievously stayed put and didn’t care to do anything thinking that the destruction of the BSE would fall as an axe upon the new UPA government’s head.

It was Manmohan Singh who rose to the occasion and knocked at the finance minister’s home and the latter now exposed, went to the Governor of Reserve Bank of India, who immediately gave the statement that the RBI has sufficient stock of foreign exchange reserved. This some how brought about some damage control. But the outspoken and untimely nature of the Communist leaders cannot go off the records, even after four years now.

If the Left Front is today crying foul over the rising prices and their workers are shouting at the top of their voices for increasing the subsidies, it is oblivious of the fact that the politically literate people of the country have well recognized the obstructive nature of the communists themselves. When Jyoti Basu, the longest serving chief minister stepped down, he was given farewell with as many flowers as the days he served in that capacity. But the media rightly put up a critique of his chief ministership of more than twenty years, as nothing more than of average standard.

In a TV show debate in the NDTV, a member of audience once put a good question to the Leftist leader Nilotpal Basu that the Communists have been talking of poverty ever since they were born in this country, but why then the West Bengal has so much poor population. This type of feeling was confirmed to me during this protest when I spoke to a labour, Dhanna Singh from Punjab who drives a wooden cart at daily wages whenever he gets a chance. I observed that all the poor people in the rally, which had mostly labourers and farmers in it, had certain formula things to say which interestingly are the things to make up the communists ideology.

Dhanna Singh simply said that the rich are enjoying and for them the hike of prices is not an issue, but where will the poor people go. The same feeling was expressed by Nand Paswan from Rajpur who also begins his day afresh to try his luck in getting some work. But when I asked Dhanna Singh whether he was sure that if the UPA government was dethroned and the Left government was formed his problems would be over. He simply gave a hollow laugh and said, "Babuji, greebi koi bhi naheen hatata, sub batein karte hain" (No body removes poverty, they simply talk).

The Left Front also seems to have been alerted by the analysis appearing in various papers that perhaps in the next Lok Sabha elections, the Leftists would be the biggest losers and it could be Mayawati who would now share power with the Congress, with Mayawati even dreaming to become PM.

The speeches delivered in this protest on a stage constructed just half a kilometer distance from the Parliament (near Patel Chowk) condemned both the Congress and the BJP, as the parties of the hoarders. The double standards of the Leftists are however clear when one draws attention to the statement by the West Bengal chief minister in 2006 that surprised not only people and members of other parties but even the CPM politburo. He said, –‘We are not implementing Socialism here in West Bengal’.

His statement was however to be welcomed by the enthusiasts of globalisation but one needs to just look at the troublesome behavior of the Leftist with the UPA government by its unwanted hindrances to Manmohan Singh’s economic policies and their unnecessary ideological talk, be it the disinvestment of the BHEL or the Retail Market or the Nuclear Treaty. But Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee could not hide his own party’s hypocrisy in Singur where Mamta Bannerjea went on a record 25-day hunger strike, and who would forgive Buddha for his inhuman handling of the Nandigram episode. He allotted the duty of police to his cadres who not only killed people but also raped the hapless women.

The Left’s Dharna at Jantar Mantar should therefore be perceived like an elephant’s second type of teeth, in accordance with the saying that elephants have two types of teeth – one for eating and the other one for showing. These are certainly the tusks of the elephant and not their eating teeth, which actually wants to taste more seats in the coming Lok Sabha elections.

Mani Rathnam's son is a CPM volunteer

Mani Rathnam's son Nandan surprised everyone by becoming a volunteer of Marxist Communist Party of India (CPI-M) and officially he made his appearance in the party activities in its 19th All India Congress held at Coimbatore today. He joined in the party because of its 'cogent, comprehensive and highly developed complex of theory and practice', says in his first ever media meet held here.

The son of star couple said that while studying in eleventh standard, his reading habit introduced him to the most respective political movement of India. Nandan is also surprised with another achievement. He is the author of the party's conference pamphlet on Leninism.

CPI(M) not to forge alliance with Cong. to isolate BJP

Coimbatore (PTI): The CPI(M), which supports the UPA government from outside, on Tuesday decided not to enter into any alliance or forge a united front with Congress in its attempt to isolate BJP.

While continuing to adopt tactics to isolate and defeat BJP, CPI(M) would "not enter into any alliance or united front with Congress," Polit Bureau member S Ramachandran Pillai told reporters here.

"The party would maintain relations with all non-Congress secular parties for developing united struggles and joint actions on common issues," he said.

The Political Resolution, which outlined these tasks, was adopted unanimously by the CPI(M) Congress, the highest body of the party, after incorporating 46 amendments.

The meet has begun discussion on Political-Organisational Report, making a "serious assessment" of CPI(M)'s performance since the last such conference three years ago, he said.

The resolution has also asked the party to develop its independent strength and expand its political base, besides projecting the Left and democratic alternative and building up mass movements on people's issues.

Pillai said the party's membership had grown by over 1.14 lakh to over almost 11 lakh since the last Congress and acknowledged the trend of "uneven growth" of the party was still continuing as it was experiencing stunted growth in the Hindi-belt.

To a question on aligning with DMK-led Front in Tamil Nadu, in which the Congress is also an ally, Pillai said the CPI(M) has relationship only with the DMK and has no truck with Congress in the state. On the Congress' reported overtures for an electoral tieup with Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, with which CPI(M) also has good relations, he said there were many regional parties like the RJD of Lalu Prasad with which the CPI(M) can forge alliance.

To a question on coming assembly elections in Karnataka, he said the party has not yet discussed the issue and would take an appropriate decision at an approriate time. As far as the TDP in Andhra Pradesh was concerned, CPIM was having a discussion on common programme for the third alternative with its chief N Chandrababu Naidu, he said. Asked about the uneveness in party's growth in northern states and the growth being confined only to CPI(M)-ruled states and Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Pillai said the party was trying to identify the reasons.

However, the party has made good progress in states like Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Jharkhand and expanded among the newer sections of population like tribals, he claimed.

Asked whether the CPI(M) was relying on parties like SP and RJD to expand its base in UP and Bihar, he said "to build the CPI(M), we do not rely on any political party. Alliances with such parties are only to take care of electoral tasks".

The party Congress also adopted resolutions on gender equality, the rights of Dalits, Forest Rights Bill and the sixth pay commission.

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

West Bengal CM visits TNAU

Staff Reporter

http://www.hindu.com/2008/04/01/stories/2008040155000500.htm

Discussed about genetically-modified crops

Warm welcome: West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (right) being received by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University Vice-Chancellor C. Ramasamy on his visit to the university in Coimbatore on Monday.

COIMBATORE: The Chief Minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, visited the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University here on Monday and had an interaction with the Vice-Chancellor of the university, C. Ramasamy.

The latter briefed him about the university’s activities and its thrust areas in research and development.

According to a university release, the main topics of discussion were Genetically Modified crops and their status in the country and the impact created by Bt cotton and the benefits gained by the farmers.

The Chief Minister also evinced keen interest in the modern farm technologies – Precision Farming and the System of Rice Intensification technique of TNAU. The Vice-Chancellor explained to him the role of TNAU in popularizing these sets of hi-tech package of practices among farmers of Tamil Nadu and how they benefited through adopting them.

Mr. Bhattacharjee was also briefed on the various educational programmes offered by the university.

National

CPI(M) Congress pledges to resist neo-liberal policies

Vinay Kumar

http://www.hindu.com/2008/03/31/stories/2008033160181400.htm

Political resolution adopted; will spare no effort to isolate BJP-RSS combine

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To champion cause of Dalits, tribals and minorities

Democratic forces urged to rally together

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COIMBATORE: Outlining a four-pronged political approach, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said on Monday that the party would spare no effort to isolate the BJP-RSS combine which spearheads the communal forces in the country; struggle to defend national sovereignty; mobilise democratic sections to thwart the U.S. imperialist designs to convert India into its strategic ally; and continue to champion the cause of the Dalits, tribals, women and minorities.

The party’s future line was finalised when its 19th Congress adopted the political resolution with some amendments on Monday evening. Briefing newspersons here, the CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said discussions on the political resolution went on for two days and nearly seven hours were devoted to it.

“At the conclusion, the main direction given in the draft political resolution and formulations in it were adopted unanimously. Delegates gave their wide-ranging support to them. In the amendments too, submitted to the steering committee, there was no major disagreement; they only strengthened the formulations of the draft political resolution,” Mr. Karat explained.

The party Congress called upon all patriotic, democratic and progressive forces to rally together against imperialism and in defence of national sovereignty; fight against the policies of liberalisation and privatisation for a pro-people path of development; for defence of secular democracy and strengthening federalism.

It also pledged to resist the neo-liberal policies, defend the interests of the working people and work for alternative policies.

Asserting that nobody should underestimate the necessity to fight the BJP and the communal forces, Mr. Karat said thatgiven the growing discontent and the economic hardships of the people, there was a danger of the discontent being channelled into divisive communal politics.

The 18th party Congress held in April 2005 in Delhi had enjoined upon the party to continue the struggle without let-up against the communal forces. Discussions this time around also took into consideration the fact that the BJP in the last three years had fallen back on its Hindutva agenda and sought to push through its communal platform. “We have countered this along with other democratic and secular forces,” Mr. Karat said.

Discussions on the draft political resolution also took note of the agrarian crisis, big business-led growth regime which has diminished job opportunities for the people, food security, need to pursue an independent foreign policy which requires that India does not enter into a strategic alliance with the U.S. and opposition to the India-U.S. defence framework agreement.

‘Not just a poll alliance’

On the third alternative, Mr. Karat said that it could not be merely an “electoral alliance.” To a question on the possibility of such an alternative emerging before the next general elections, he said: “I cannot say anything about it.” To another query, he said that for the party the next general elections were only in 2009.

He reiterated that the party would maintain relations with all the non-Congress secular parties for developing united struggles and joint actions on common issues. The building of a third alternative must be undertaken and the CPI(M) should take the initiative for this and strengthen Left unity to facilitate the

emergence of such an alternative. Such a platform would be based on a consistent anti-communal outlook, advocate pro-people economic measures and work for social welfare.

CPI(M) unhappy with govt. steps to check inflation

Coimbatore (PTI): Expressing dissatisfaction with the government's measures to control spiralling prices of essential goods, its key outside supporter CPI(M) on Tuesday said it would go ahead with its proposed nationwide agitation with Left and other parties.

"These measures are half-hearted and not fruitful. They haven't taken any concrete steps to check prices. We are discussing with other parties and will organise the protest actions jointly," Polit Bureau member S Ramachandran Pillai told reporters here.

Among the urgent measures the party has demanded are a ban on futures trading in all essential commodities, withdrawal of a legislation which would allow FDI into the commodities market, universalising public distribution system, changing the petro-products taxation structure and carrying out dehoarding drives, he said.

His remarks came a day after the government announced a fresh set of measures including ban on export of non-basmati rice and slashing of import duties on edible oils and maize to check inflation.

Responding to questions on the 6th Pay Commission, he said the party Congress had adopted a resolution asking the government not to accept the recommendations to abolish the Group D posts "which means elimination of about 12 lakh posts in the central services itself".

He said the CPI(M) also wanted the government not to accept the pay panel's recommendation on corporatisation of the railways and defence establishments. Through the resolution, the party wants the Centre to bear 50 per cent of the expenditure of all states in implementing the pay hike for state government employees. This should be 90 per cent in case of the Northeastern special category states, he said.

The 19th Congress also adopted a resolution demanding immediate implementation of the Forest Rights Act and include it under the 9th Schedule of the Constitution to protect tribal interests.

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CPI-M to go ahead with mass protests over price rise
Coimbatore, April 1 (IANS) Accusing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government of failing to take “concrete steps” to contain the price rise, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Tuesday vowed to go ahead with plans to launch a nation-wide campaign. “The measures (taken by the government) are not fruitful to contain the price rise. There was no suggestion for concrete measures,” CPI-M politburo member S. Ramachandra Pillai told reporters here on the deliberations in the 19th party congress.

The CPI-M has asked the government to strengthen the public distribution system by introducing universal PDS - without differentiating between those who live below and above the poverty level - and by distributing other essentials such as pulses and edible oil.

It has also urged the government to ban the future trading in 25 agricultural commodities, cut custom and excise duties on oil, reduce retail prices of petrol and diesel and take stringent action against hoarding of essential commodities.

CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat has said the CPI-M was in touch with other Left parties as well as “like-minded parties” to choke out a strategy to fighting the rising prices.

The party said a nation-wide mass movement would be mobilized after April 15. Karat has said he has already held discussions with TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu on this regard.

The party congress also resolutions on gender equality, in defence of Dalits, on the forest rights bill and on the sixth Pay Commission.

CPI-M for SEZs only in limited areas

Coimbatore, April 2 (IANS) The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said Wednesday that it favoured special economic zones (SEZs) only in limited areas. “We are of the view that SEZs should be granted only for those industries where advanced technology is required. The second category could be for the export-oriented sectors,” West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here.

Speaking on the sidelines of the CPI-M party congress, he said the area of land to be provided should depend on the industry.

“There should be restrictions… At least 50 percent of the land should be used for industrial purposes and 25 percent for infrastructure. Nobody can bypass the law of the land, so SEZs should not be exempted from labour laws.”

According to the chief minister, there should be no SEZs for real estate, recreation centers and water sports.

Bhattacharjee went on: “West Bengal has a history as a manufacturing hub since the British rule. The manufacturing sector was powerful in the state. We want to revive that glory.”

Dismissing opposition to his industrial policies from the CPI-M’s smaller allies as “small differences”, Bhattacharjee said: “They will gradually support us. We will reach a consensus.”

No truck with Cong: CPM

Statesman News Service
COIMBATORE, April 1: The CPI-M will not enter into any alliance or united front with the Congress, though it considered the latter to be a ‘secular bourgeois party’ often vacillating when the communal forces took the offensive.
A resolution to this effect was passed at the 19th congress of CPI-M here. It also said that the CPI-M would continue to adopt tactics for isolating and defeating the BJP. Vowing to build a third alternative, the resolution said it would take the initiative for this and strengthen Left unity to facilitate this work.
In the present situation the party must give priority to developing its independent strength and expanding its political base, the resolution noted and added that it should take class and mass issues to develop movements and struggles.
The resolution said that the party would maintain relations with all the non-Congress secular parties for developing united struggles and joint actions on common issues.
The CPI-M asserted that it would ceaselessly struggle to defend national sovereignty, resist the ‘neo-liberal polices’ and defend the interests of the working people. The party would mobilise all the patriotic and democratic sections to thwart the US imperialist designs to convert India into its strategic ally, it said.
The party also vowed to champion the cause of the Dalits, tribal people, women, minorities and other oppressed sections for social justice.
On the sixth pay commission recommendations, the party said some of them were detrimental to employees’ interests. It opposed the abolition of Group D posts and urged the government not to accept it. The party wanted the Centre to grant 50 per cent funds to states for wage revisions and added that the funds should be 90 per cent for states of North-East.
Pressing for the Women’s Reservation Bill, it demanded immediate steps to deal with ever-increasing violence and crimes against women. Another resolution demanded reservation for Dalits and Adivasis in the private sector and immediate filling of backlog vacancies reserved for Dalits and Adivasis in government jobs and educational institutions. The party also called for stringent implementation of SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and strict action against perpetrators of atrocities against Dalits. It also urged for land reforms, with priority to Dalits, Adivasis and women in respect of distribution of agricultural and house-site land and joint pattas.
Mr S Ramachandran Pillai, who explained the resolutions and political-organisational report said the party membership had increased by 1,14,392 since the 18th congress three years ago. He added that the growth in the Hindi heartland was more than the national average and claimed that the party is growing in all the Hindi-speaking states.

CPI(M) for more financial powers for States

K.V. Prasad

A reduction in revenue made the economy of States vulnerable, says Yechury

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The States under financial stress: Resolution

States forced to look for alternative sources

of funding

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— Photo: K. Ananthan

Congress minutes: CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury briefs the media on the resolutions adopted on the second day of the 19th Congress of the party in Coimbatore on Sunday.

COIMBATORE: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) will embark on a nationwide campaign for greater devolution of financial powers for the States, Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury said here on Sunday. The objective was to create self-reliant States that were now dependent on the flow of funds from the Centre, in the form of a share of the taxes.

Briefing presspersons on a resolution on Centre-State relations, passed on the second day of the six-day 19th Congress of the party, he said the States were under financial stress, with low tax revenue being a major reason.

The resolution attributed imbalance in the revenue to the important powers to raise revenue remaining with the Centre.

Mr. Yechury said the share of funds for the States from the direct taxes collected by the Centre was also getting reduced. This was because of tax concessions offered for investments.

A reduction in the quantum of revenue brought pressure on the States to look for alternative sources of funding for development schemes. The sources include lending institutions such as the World Bank. The economy of the States had become vulnerable and this restricted the scope for development.

“After the party Congress, we will consult the Chief Ministers of other States on what action can be taken,” he said. The party would first take this issue to the States ruled by the Left front. Then the others would be consulted in phases.

The party was of the view that the States must get a one-third share initially, which must be raised to 50 per cent. At the same time, it was the right of the States to raise taxes. At present, they were dependent on devolution of funds from the Centre.

The party Congress noted with concern the deterioration in the Centre-State relations in recent years in all spheres involving administrative, legislative and especially financial issues.

It was on the pressure of public opinion created by the Left and democratic forces led by the CPI (M) that the Central government constituted the Sarkaria Commission.

The United Progressive Alliance government had now constituted a new commission to go into the Centre-State relations. But, even after over two decades, practically none of its recommendations were implemented. The expectations created by the UPA on this front had been belied, the resolution noted.

On other aspects of Centre-State relations, the resolution said there was a new and alarming tendency of misinterpreting the provisions of Article 355 and sending of armed forces to the States by the Centre unilaterally. On the other hand, when the States asked for deployment of such forces, there was undue delay in meeting the request.

Congress lesser evil, but no tie-up please: CPI-M
By Liz Mathew
Coimbatore, April 1 (IANS) The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Tuesday called the Congress party a lesser evil than the “communal” Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but said it would still not have any electoral tie up with it. In a political resolution passed unanimously at the 19th party congress here, the CPI-M said: “The party differentiates between the BJP and the Congress, considering the latter as a secular bourgeois party, though it often vacillates when the communal forces take offensive.”

It added: “The party will continue to adopt tactics for isolating and defeating the BJP.”

But the CPI-M, one of four Left parties providing key legislative support to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, insisted: “It will not enter into any alliance or united front with the Congress.”

Party politburo member S. Ramachandra Pillai, who briefed the media on the third day of the party meeting, took pains to explain the CPI-M’s approach to the Congress, which heads India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

According to him, although CPI-M is a part of the fronts in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh that include the Congress, the Marxists had no direct alliance with it.

However, he later admitted that the party did not rule out entering into “seat adjustments” with the Congress to defeat “communal forces”.

In the political resolution, after 46 of the 304 amendments suggested by the 722 delegates were adopted, the CPI-M has vowed to develop its “independent strength and expand its political base.”

“This party must take class and mass issues to develop movements and struggles. This is crucial for strengthening the Left and democratic forces,” it said.

The CPI-M also pledged to maintain relations with all non-Congress secular parties for developing united struggles and joint actions on common issues. “The building of a third alternative must be undertaken.”

The congress asked the CPI-M leadership to take initiatives for this and also to strengthen Left unity to facilitate the task.

The CPI-M is also vowed to resist neo-liberal policies, oppose “US imperialistic designs” to convert India into a strategic ally.

Although party membership has increased (by 114,392), Pillai admitted that there have been dropouts due to various reasons.

“But if it is because of the shortcomings and defects, we are trying to correct them,” he said.

Party will address uneven growth: Ramachandran Pillai

Vinay Kumar

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No substantial progress made in “weak” States

Membership up by 25.7 per cent in the last three years

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COIMBATORE: After making progress in expanding its base in five States — West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Tripura — and registering an increase by 1.14 lakh in its membership since the 18th Congress three years ago, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Tuesday decided to step up efforts for rapid expansion in northern States.

Briefing reporters on the fourth day of the ongoing 19th party Congress here, Polit Bureau member S. Ramachandran Pillai said that 46 per cent of the party membership was below 40 years of age, nearly 20 per cent belonged to the scheduled castes, and 12 per cent were women.

Mr. Pillai presented two parts of the political-organisational report to the party Congress which evaluated the implementation of the tasks of developing the organisation set out by the 18th Congress. He said the membership of the class and mass organisations increased by 25.7 per cent in the last three years — the largest increase between two Congresses. However, Mr. Pillai said, that the growth was uneven and the bulk of the membership of the mass organisations belonged to the five States. The basic membership of the CPI(M) at the end of 2007 stood at 9.82 lakh as against 9.05 lakh in 2005.

Mr. Pillai said the party increased its membership in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu but no substantial progress was made in “weak” States in the north. He said Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra were some of the States where the party would increase its presence and embark on a membership drive.

“More efforts are required to increase the representation of the women in the party as well,” he said.

Mr. Pillai said many delegates expressed concern about the party’s uneven growth and wanted more efforts to be taken in the Hindi-speaking region.

In the context of Kerala and factionalism, Mr. Pillai said the party’s efforts to sort out the problem had made “substantial progress.”

Among the mass fronts of the CPI(M), the agricultural workers’ front registered an impressive growth of 44.7 per cent in its membership since the 18th Congress while the women’s front membership rose by 36.7 per cent during the same period.

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