Centre keen on waiving corporate tax but not farm loans: Yogendra Yadav

Psephologist and leader of Swaraj India Yogendra Yadav has accused the NDA government at the Centre of appeasing the corporate sector by waiving their taxes while not waiving debts of farmers who are victims of agrarian crisis. At a programme organised to merge 12-year-old Sarvodaya Karnataka Paksha (SKP), founded to espouse the cause of Dalits and farmers, with the Swaraj India here on Saturday, he said that while farmers in States such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were facing a severe drought, political parties were indulging in blame game. Mr. Yadav said there was a consistent attack on secular India, while those claiming to be secular were distanced from the ground realities. Blaming the parties claiming to have secularist ideology for the growth of the BJP, Mr. Yadav underlined the need for a third political force to protect the country’s pluralist culture. Expressing concern over the fall in values of electoral politics, writer and SKP leader Devanur Mahadeva said that both the ruling and the Opposition parties were like shadows of each other without any difference in their value systems. Attributing the massive victory of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh to divisive politics, Mr. Mahadeva blamed the BSP, the SP and the Congress for not having a strategy to counter that.

The SKP, an amalgam of the factions of the Karntaka Rajya Raitha Sangha and Dalit Sangarsha Samiti founded in 2005, had decided to take forward its agenda by merging with the Swaraj India which had a pan-India presence and was engaged in “constructive politics”, said Mr. Mahadeva.