UNPA seminar on price rise may upset UPA

Rajya Sabha MPs Bimal Jalan and Arjun Sengupta to speak.

Not only has the Samajwadi Party-led United National People's Alliance (UNPA) profited from the Left's support to nail the UPA government on price rise, it has also managed to rope in two blue-eyed economists of the Congress "" former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan and former member of the Planning Commission Arjun Sengupta. Both owe their Rajya Sabha seats to help from constituents of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

The two MPs will participate in a seminar on price rise, organised by the UNPA on April 19 at the Constitution Club in New Delhi. While they are expected to strictly confine themselves to the realm of the economics of inflation, their very presence on an anti-Congress platform is bound to raise eyebrows in the ruling party.

Bimal Jalan told Business Standard, "Inflation is a national policy issue. This is a concern for all the people of this country. It is not a partisan or a political issue. I have told the organisers that I'll talk from a non-party, non-political point of view. And they have agreed."

According to Left sources, Sengupta was approached by SP leader Amar Singh. He will deliver a lecture on one of his own reports which reveals that 77 per cent of Indians can't afford to spend more than Rs 20 a day. The report was produced by the National Commission for Enterprises in Unorganised Sector, a government-run body headed by Sengupta.

Neither Jalan nor Sengupta belong to political party and are nominated members of the Rajya Sabha. However, neither would have made it if the UPA hadn't gone along. Jalan became a nominated MP during the tenure of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance but with the support of the Congress.

During their careers in the bureaucracy, Jalan and Sengupta served long stints with Congress governments. Jalan was the chief economic advisor when Indira Gandhi was the prime minister. He became the governor of the Reserve Bank of India when Manmohan Singh was the finance minister.

Sengupta, who reportedly has friendly relations with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was the special secretary to Indira Gandhi from 1981 to 1984. He was also sent as the Ambassador of India to the European Union in 1993, during the Congress regime.

Jalan and Sengupta may be reflecting the views of bipartisan economists worried about a challenge to the Indian economy.

But the organisers "" the UNPA "" have a different agenda altogether: The UNPA and the four Left parties have come together on the issue of price rise and the convention is a part of their week-long protest programme against the Manmohan Singh government on the issue. The combined protest planned both at the central level as well as in the states will kickstart from April 17.

Apart from Jalan and Sengupta, the political organisers are also trying to get Left-leaning intellectuals and economists to join the panel. They have been told that this will be a multi-party affair to address the issue of inflation.

The convention where Jalan and Sengupta will talk about economics is actually the first political initiative to test the waters of the possibilities of the Left's dream: A third alternative, led by them.