CPI(M)'S CONTEMPT FOR ITS OWN RENOWNED JNU ECONOMISTS

Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, Utsa Patnaik, Jayati Ghosh, and C P Chandrashekhar are renowned intellectuals and Left economists.
But their own party, the CPI(M), has scant respect for their views. Its West Bengal Government prefers to take advice from imperialist agencies like McKinsey, World Bank, ADB and so on rather than from the economists in its own party.

Read the following excerpt from the CNN-IBN interview of West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya with Diptosh Majumdar, dated July 1, 2007:

Diptosh Majumdar: But is the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee rate of growth causing confusion in the party hierarchy in Delhi also? For example, Prabhat Patnaik and people like that who are heading state planning boards in Kerala—are suggesting no loan should be taken from any financial institutions especially World Bank. You are propagating a completely different view. Are you not at loggerheads with this kind of idea?

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee: I have read Prabhat Patnaik’s statements and I don’t agree with what he has said.

Diptosh Majumdar: Prabhat Patnaik is supposedly the economist of your party.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee: That is correct. But I have serious differences with him over what he is writing now days about industrialisation.

Diptosh Majumdar: Do you have differences with the entire group—Prabhat Patnaik, Jayati Ghosh, Utsa Patnaik?

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee: I don’t want to mention their names. But there is a group of people with same ideas. They are writing on many issues—developments in India, China. I generally do not accept their views. I feel they are a bit academic. They don’t understand the real situation. What you mentioned about foreign loans from World Bank, in our last party congress in Delhi, it was decided we can take loans from any organisation like World Bank, ADB, Japanese Bank of International Cooperation and others without any conditions.

They should not impose any terms and conditions—that is the only issue. They should not impose any conditions. And so far as our state is concerned, we have taken loans from World Bank, ADB, DFID, Japanese Bank of International Cooperation without any conditions. We are taking these loans from stand-alone basis. And on this issue if Prabhat Patnaik says no this is not correct, I can tell him that the party congress decided it and we are following that.

Diptosh Majumdar: You are not afraid of Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury and senior politburo members taking their side and not your side.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee: The politburo is solidly behind our government.

Would SFI tell us if it agrees with Buddhadeb Bhattacharya's views that JNU's Left economists are "out of date" and "cut off from reality"?