Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The tragedy of socialism drama

Sitaram Yechury writes in HT:

  • This trajectory resulted in the assets of the top 22 monopoly houses shooting up from Rs 312.63 crore in 1957 to Rs 1,58,004.72 crore in 1997, a 500-fold increase. Private capital, thus enabled, mounted pressure for the privatisation of the public sector in order to further enlarge their profits. The subsequent years of neo-liberal reforms have today produced 52 USD billionaires whose combined assets equal a fourth of our country’s GDP. On the other hand, 77 per cent of our people are living on less than Rs 20 a day.

  • This is accompanied by an unbridled loot of public resources and the country’s mineral wealth under what can be described as ‘crony capitalism’ at its worst. The telecom scam, the Indian Premier League scam and the illegal mining scam appear to rule the roost. Further, this is also distorting our parliamentary democracy where money power is influencing the voting pattern of the people.

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