People's Democracy

Cancel Disinvestment, Left Parties Demand 

Four Left parties, viz the (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Revolutionary Socialist Party and Forward Bloc, jointly issued the following statement from New Delhi on November 6, 2009.

THE Left parties strongly condemn the decision of the union cabinet to disinvest shares in all profitable public sector units, listed and unlisted, to the extent of 10 per cent.

The government has also declared its intention to bring down the government's stake in these enterprises to 51 per cent. By this, the Congress led government has laid out a road map for the privatisation of the public sector units as it will require only a small step to bring down the government stake to a minority, i e below 50 per cent.

The government is undertaking this measure under the fraudulent pretext of ensuring "people's participation" in the public sector.

The government has gone back on its previous commitments. Shares of the navaratna companies are being put on the block for sale. Further, the government had committed not to utilise the corpus accruing through the sale of shares in the National Investment Fund, only the interest on the funds were to be utilised. Now with a sleight of hand this has been suspended for three years so that the proceeds from disinvestment can be utilised for meeting the fiscal deficit. The plea that this fund will be utilised for social sector programmes is an eyewash.

The Manmohan Singh government has embarked on this patently anti-national step along with measures to remove the cap of FDI in various sectors and open up more areas to foreign capital including vital sectors like the media.

The Left parties appeal to all patriotic forces and political parties to demand cancellation of the disinvestment measures.

The Left parties will chalk out plans to organise strong resistance to the privatisation moves. It will actively mobilise and lend support to the struggles of the public sector employees and the working class against disinvestment.

The signatories are CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, CPI general secretary A B Bardhan, RSP general secretary T J Chandrachoodan, and AIFB general secretary Debabrata Biswas. (INN)