Sunday, August 10, 2014

Does India need a ' spring ' ?

We have written previously about how the Congress, knowing it was going to lose the coming general elections, knowingly and carefully enacted policies that would wreck the economy completely, destroying the credibility of the next government so that it could come back to power in 2019. The Land Acquisition Act makes any infrastructure project impossible. Vast wasteful spending, leading to uncontrolled deficit, led to diving growth rate. The price of natural gas was suddenly doubled, which would immediately hit the middle class, and the payment of money spent on subsidies was postponed to this year, falsely reducing last year's deficit. Last December the Trade Minister, Anand Sharma committed India to the Trade Facilitation clause at the WTO meeting at Bali. In return the rich countries allowed India to stockpile food as at present. Rich countries, especially the US, would like us to buy food grains from them to make their farmers rich. If they can stop the government from paying a higher rate for food grains, called the Minimum Support Price, and prevent stockpiling of food grains we would be forced to pay whatever they charge if crops failed because of a poor monsoon. They are trying their best to get the world to use genetically modified food so that they can control our food supply through the ' terminator technology ' which is patented by the US Department of Agriculture. There is a very vocal support group for GM crops in India but whether they are telling the truth or are being paid by the giant multinationals we do not know. In the agreement at Bali there is one sentence which reads," In the interim, until a permanent solution is found, members will be protected against challenges in the WTO under the Agreement on Agriculture....." On 18 December in the Rajya Sabha  Mr Sharma claimed," It unambiguously stated that the solution shall continue until a permanent solution is found." In the recent negotiations the present government wanted to replace the comma with an ' or ' so that the sentence will read as," In the interim OR until a solution is found," but the rich countries refused and orchestrated a vicious campaign of vilification against India. So did Mr Sharma fall for the slimy cunning of the rich countries out of tiredness or did he deliberately set a trap for this government, knowing that after 2017 the MSP will disappear, farmers will commit suicide and the Congress will win in 2019 by blaming the BJP for the chaos? After the betrayal at Sharm al-Sheikh nothing seems impossible. Should their be no punishment for treachery? Politicians will never agree to any accountability. So, do we need an Indian spring?

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