Budget Deficit and Current Account Balance

Wrong Target THE report on Cochin Stock Exchange (CSE) has particular relevance in the light of proposed mass blockade of CSE by a Naxalite faction led by K Venu on February 28 as a symbolic act against the monopolies for draining capital from the Kerala economy and for initiating a discussion, on the need for a true federal political system in the country to end the exploitation by corporate big bourgeois. While agreeing with the views on development of Kerala economy as a whole and the expansion of share market in parti cular, the observation "capital drain through share market would nip the development process in the bud" is based on feeble logic and the argument wrongly attributing 'share frenzy' as a prime reason for industrial under-development of the state. Though undesirable, the unprecedented growth of monopoly companies, development of stock exchanges and ever increasing expansion of the share market are contemporary characteristics of our economic development process. The need of the hour is not an attack on the stock exchange or the share market, but clear-cut political struggles aimed at a new economic order.