NEW DELHI: After waging a long campaign against former NITI Aayog vice chairman Arvind Panagaria, which eventually led to his exit, the RSS affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch has now singled out Member Ramesh Chand in the think-tank for stalling higher minimum support prices (MSPs) for farmers. The SJM in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi has accused the NITI Aayog Member of carrying the Corporate agenda.
“There are reports that the NITI Aayog Member Ramesh Chand is claiming that MSP offered by your government is inflationary. This is not only insult to the political leadership, which has taken this great decision keeping the interests of farmers in mind, but is also an ill-informed and malicious statement,” the SJM co-convenor Ashwani Mahajan has stated in his letter to the Prime Minister.
The RSS affiliate has seemingly gone after Chand at a time when NITI Aayog is in the midst of giving final shape to a proposal to give effect to the Budget proposal to ensure higher income for farmers by ways of higher MSPs and procurement prices.
Mahajan has exhorted Prime Minister to seek clarifications from Chand with empirical study, besides source or minutes of stakeholder consultations done to reach these conclusions, for claims that higher MSPs would lead to inflation in the country. The SJM on its parts has put forth claims of a couple of studies, which claimed that higher MSPs didn’t translate into inflation.
The SJM has also called upon Prime Minister for action against the NITI Aayog Member in the event he fails to provide rational basis for his purported claims of increased MSPs translating into inflationary pressure in the economy.
“The combined effect of the two budget announcements on farm level prices will be about 15 per cent. Transmission of this increase to wholesale and retail levels will have very strong implication for inflation and consumers,” Mahajan has referred to the purported statement of Chand in his letter to the Prime Minister.
The SJM leader has asserted that claims of the NITI Aayog Member are “blatant lies, while confusing, malafide and ill-informed statements only add confusions in minds of farmers”.
The SJM in its letter referred to papers from sectoroal experts Gopakumar K U and V Pandit, who have concluded that "higher MSP hasn’t turned inflationary as many would have expected”.
The RSS affiliate reiterated its charges against NITI Aayog in the letter, saying that in the last three years, there are several evidences coming out of think-tank pushing corporate agenda.