Criticising the Government’s decision to ease FDI in 15 key sectors, left parties on Thursday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi roll back the “licence to loot” and focus on providing relief to people from escalating price rise and agrarian crisis. The CPI(M) and CPI accused Modi of appeasing the foreign companies during his foreign visits, ignoring the Indian economic realities in agriculture, trade and livelihood of workers.
“The Politburo of the CPI(M) strongly condemns the announcement by the Prime Minister easing the regulations for Foreign Direct Investments in our country. 15 areas, including single brand retail, banking, construction, media, airlines, Defence, banking, plantations etc, are to be opened up for approval under the automatic route. Thirty two new investment points will now allow FDI automatically. The cap for approval of foreign investments has been raised to Rs5,000 crore from the existing Rs3,000 crore. The increase in the FDI to 49 per cent for news channels and radio is particularly harmful as it will facilitate near complete control of the news media by foreign media monopolies,” said CPI(M) in a statement, terming the decision as “licence to loot”.
“This is opening the doors without restrictions to MNCs to loot our country and influence its policies. The MNCs are demanding more and more taking advantage of the weakness of the Government of India’s anxiety for FDIs, none can satisfy the lust of MNCs. labour reforms denying TU rights, minimum wage, guarantee of employment, and tax concessions of tens of thousands of crores of rupees are on the cards to satisfy the MNCs. These policies will damage the livelihood of our workers, increase unemployment, make the country more dependent on the West and hence should be rolled back,” said CPI in a statement.
CITU leaders Tapan Sen and AK Padamanbhan said none of the concessions to foreign capital “is going to benefit the national economy” except creating more job-losses through unleashing a process of further de-industrialisation and destruction of domestic capacities.
CPI(M)’s All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) also blamed the Centre for allowing 100 percent FDI in agriculture, animal husbandry and plantation. “There was no discussion in the Cabinet about such a decision that will have far reaching consequences underlines the authoritarian and dictatorial means of administration under Narendra Modi regime. The haste of the government is clear since the announcement came in the wake of the forthcoming winter session of the Parliament,” said AIKS leaders Hannan Molla and Amra Ram.