Worried Left seek re-think on liberalisaton-spree

New Delhi, May 19 : The Left parties today urged the government to have a re-think on its economic liberalisation-spree, warning that otherwise the country would meet the fate of the Asian Tigers in the 1990s.

Reacting to yesterday's stock market crash, the leders of the CPI and CPI(M) said the fall also confirmed the worst fears of the vulnerability of market to activities of foreign institutional investors (FIIs).

''The Left have been consistently warning that the bull-run in the Sensex was no indication of the economic health of the country,'' CPI General Secretary A B Bardhan said.

Mr Bardhan, a veteran communist and freedom fighter pointed out that in the past also manipulators and speculators had used the mechanism to fleece small investors in the era of liberalisation when the stock market had been integrated with world's speculative economy.

CPI National Secretary Shamim Faizi said any fall and inflationary effect on other economies had always adversely affected India's economic sector.

''In the past, due to our national assets, particularly our PSUs, we escaped repurcussions of currency crisis in several Asian countries. But now with the rise in inflation in the dollar economy, our stock market has started tremors,'' Mr Faizi, editor of CPI mouthpiece 'New Age', said.

He said the fall of as much as 826 points in the sensex was the direct result of the crisis in economies elsewhere.

Pleading that the Manmohan Singh government must have a re-think on the experience of 15 years of economic reforms in the country, he said economic new liberalism is not the solution to this problem.

CPI( M) leader Nilotpal Basu ssid if reports were to be believed the FIIs were trying to influence the taxation policy of India, which is a ''warning signal for us''.

''A similar fall in the value of rupee substantiate the opposition to the government's proposed move for full convertibility of the rupee,'' Mr Basu added.

UNI

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