PM ignored vital economic issues, migrant plight in lockdown speech: Yechury

Shubhadeep Choudhury 
Tribune News Service
Kolkata, April 14

Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitraram Yechury on Tuesday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of ignoring vital economic issues in his address to the nation that was broadcast on Tuesday morning.

In a press conference held through the Facebook, Yechury said while over 300 people had lost their lives in the country to coronavirus, more than 200 people lost their lives during this period due to hunger, malnutrition, exhaustion and lack of shelter.

“This proportion cannot be sustained,” Yechury said and appealed to the Prime Minister to immediately arrange a cash transfer of Rs 7,500 each to the bank account of everyone whose annual income was less than required to become an income tax payer.

“We heard about cash transfer when the financial package was first announced. But nothing has happened since then. Meanwhile, very grave issues regarding livelihood and survival have come to the fore following the lockdown,” Yechury said.

The CPI (M) leader claimed that the package announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman amounted to only one per cent of the country’s GDP.

“Even a small country like Malaysia announced a package that amounted to 16 per cent of the country’s GDP,” Yechury said. He added that most countries were announcing massive economic packages to tide over the financial difficulties of their people brought over by lockdown and demanded that the central government should also spent an amount equivalent to at least five per cent of its GDP to give relief to people at this juncture.

The CPI (M) leader also said that since states were at the forefront of the battle against the virus, thousands of crores of rupees collected under the PM Cares Fund must be handed over to them to enable them fight the pandemic.

Yechury said the prime minister announced in his last address that there would not be termination of employment or pay cuts of employees by the management owing to the lockdown.

“However, in reality, largescale job losses were taking place across the board. Not only casual workers but even regular employees were losing jobs due to downsizing,” Yechury said. He appealed to the Prime Minister to step in and prevent the largescale firing of employees taking place across industries.

On the agricultural front, Yechury said that rice harvested by farmers were still lying with the producers since the mandis are closed and there is no one to procure the crop, He said similar fate awaited the wheat crop also. Yechury demanded that the government must ensure procurement of grain at the C2 plus 50 per cent support price.

The CPI (M) leader said he hoped some of the issues raised by him at the press conference would be dealt with when the guidelines for the second phase of the lockdown were announced on Wednesday.