Communists determined to change Chidambaram's Budget

George Iype in New Delhi

India's Communists will demand major changes in the United Front government's federal budget for fiscal 1997-98.

Some Communists say the Budget presented by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Friday, February 28, is a ''Contradiction Management Programme' as it does not reflect many of the promises made in the UF's Common Minimum Programme.

"Chidambaram has followed what the previous Congress government has been practising. Therefore, we will oppose some of the major provisions in the Budget," Harkishen Singh Surjeet, general secretary of the Communist Party of India- Marxist.

"The Budget is a Contradiction Management Programme, not the Common Minimum Programme as it was meant to be," Surjeet told Rediff On The NeT.

CPI-M sources said two crucial issues that the party will sternly oppose are Chidambaram's decision to throw open health insurance to the private sector and his failure to allocate any resources for the National Renewal Fund.

"Allowing the private sector to participate in health insurance is a deft move by Chidambaram to throw open the floodgates of India's vast insurance sector to foreign companies," a CPI-M leader said. He added that the decision paves the way for the back-door entry of health companies with foreign expertise to enter the Indian insurance market.

The finance minister says he is opening the health insurance sector to private companies as the penetration of health insurance cover is distressingly low at barely 2 million people.

Communist Party of India leader M Farooqi says his party will not allow the private sector to enter the health insurance business. "Let government insurance companies like the Life Insurance Corporation and General Insurance Company be exclusively entrusted with the task of looking after the country's health sector," he told Rediff On The NeT.

The Communists are also peeved that there is no mention of the National Renewal Fund in the Budget. The NRF was launched by the Congress finance minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, in 1992.

The NRF was meant to take care of employees who lose their jobs as a result of structural changes in the economy and modernisation including technological upgradation and cost-cutting. "But the NRF has only provided terminal benefits like golden handshakes to employees. It has never helped the labour force in the country," feels a senior Communist leader.

He says it is amazing that Chidambaram has not allocated even a single paise for the NRF while he is ardently going ahead with economic liberalisation. ''We do not want a Budget that does not help our workforce," he told Rediff On The NeT.

Both the CPI-M and CPI have convened a meeting of their respective politburo later this month to debate the Budget and make appropriate suggestions to the finance minister.