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Mass rally against inflation in Delhi
Agence France Presse - February 23, 2011
Penny MacRae, New Delhi – Tens of thousands of people protested in the Indian capital against surging prices on Wednesday, heaping pressure on the embattled government to help the inflation-hit poor in next week's budget.
Streams of demonstrators, many hoisting flags emblazoned with the hammer-and-sickle communist symbol, shouted "control prices" and slogans against corruption, amid a telecom scandal which may have cost the Congress-led government up to $40 billion.
The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), which joined forces with other unions to stage the march, said it expected a turnout of up to one million people from 19 states, though the turnout could not be independently verified.
Police were unable to calculate the number of demonstrators who filled the streets, paralysing city centre traffic for hours.
While India has rebounded smartly from the global financial crisis with growth of nearly nine percent, inflation has also surged, and many Indians feel shut out of the economic boom.
The march was organised to press for the right of workers "to seek their rightful share in the country's so-called 'robust growth story'," said a CITU statement.
India's poor – who are key supporters of the ruling Congress party – have been hit hardest by the rise in the cost-of-living.
Rishi Pal, a 52-year-old member of a farmers' union from the northwestern state of Punjab, said: "We need the government to control prices. Poor people can't feed their families."
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described inflation as a "serious" threat to India's growth and the government has tried to boost vegetable and other supplies to bring down soaring food costs.
The central bank has raised interest rates seven times in less than a year, while general annual inflation still stands stubbornly above eight percent.
Food inflation is running at over 11 percent and consumer prices of food have risen by a massive 80 percent in six years, according to investment house Credit Suisse.
One protester, Jagdeesh Thakur, president of a secondary school teachers' association in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, said the left-leaning government "has forgotten the poor".
In an attempt to assuage voter anger and with four state elections due this summer, the government is expected to opt for a "safe" budget laden with food, fertilizer and fuel subsidies and to avoid any big-bang economic reforms.
"We anticipate a sizeable boost to welfare spending, designed to protect the incomes of the poorest members of society," said Credit Suisse economist Robert Prior-Wandesforde.
As well as surging inflation, a host of corruption scandals ranging from the Delhi Commonwealth Games last October to the sale of multi-billion-dollar telecom licences has sapped the popularity of Singh's administration.
On Tuesday, Singh capitulated to opposition demands to set up a cross-party investigation into the telecom licence sales in 2008, which has led to a police probe and the arrest of his former telecom minister, A. Raja.
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