2 Indias under UPA: Yechury

Sep 16, 2010 - Tanya Bagchi |

Kolkata

In an apparent reply to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s “two Bengals” barb against the CPI(M), party politburo member Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday said there were two Indias. “One is the Shining India of the rich and the powerful and the other India is that of the poor whose daily income is ’20,” he added.

Mr Yechury claimed that under the UPA rule, India has become divided into two. “One is the Shining India and the other is the Suffering India. One fourth of the GDP growth of the country was concentrated among 52 rich people in the country,” the CPI(M) politburo member added.
Mr Gandhi, in his first rally in the city, had remarked that there were two Bengals: “One is backward and full of poor people and the other was rich and shining that is controlled by the CPI(M) cadres.”
In retaliation, the CPI(M) mouthpiece Peoples’ Democracy said that even the most backward district of Bengal fared better than Rae Bareilly and Amethi. Mr Yechury even criticised Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for increasing the volume of tax concessions to the rich and reducing the subsidies given to the poor, “He has given income tax concession of one lakh 24 thousand crore rupees to the rich. The government should have taken this tax, which for the poor people is just a subsidy.” Mr Yechury was addressing the students at the 40th celebration of SFI movement in Bengal. Ridiculing the economic policy adopted by the Congress government, he has asked the members of the students’ wing to choose between the IPL India where the corrupt reigns supreme and the BPL India where at least 77 per cent of the people are still poor.
Equating the present political scenario in Bengal with the ’70s, Mr Yechury said, “We had to face the menace of the rightist forces at that time but we survived. The people eventually gave their verdict in our favour and we had been in power for 33 years. We are again facing serious threats from our adversaries and we believe that people’s verdict in 2011 will again be in our favour,” he claimed.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/33088" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-e3bc9d1e1341a9415dbbcbcd924f41bf" value="form-e3bc9d1e1341a9415dbbcbcd924f41bf" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80516409" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>