Left Front's Suicide Pact

The CPI-M offers its prescription for the rising cost of commodities in India:

• Strengthen the Public Distribution System by universalizing it; restore the cut in food grain allocations to the states under the PDS; include 15 essential commodities including pulses, edible oil, and sugar in the PDS.
• Put curbs on procurement of foodgrains from farmers by private companies and traders.
• Ban futures trading in 25 agricultural commodities as proposed by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution.
• Cut customs and excise duties on oil and reduce retail prices of petrol and diesel.
• Take stringent action against hoarding of essential commodities; strengthen the provisions of the Essential Commodities Act to empower state governments to deal with hoarding and black-marketing.
• The present requirement of declaration of stocks of foodgrains of 50,000 tonnes and above held in godowns and warehouses should be lowered to 10,000 tonnes.

It's a recipe for disaster, if you ask me. Government intervention, of any kind, may be a viable short-term solution, but in the long-term it will only end in disaster.