Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Bombay Sensitive Index (Sensex) have never been mutually dependent.
But now the CPI-M is taking the mutual fund route to build its cash reserve even as global markets are in a tailspin and the US financial crisis is looking grim.
Even as the party continues to berate Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram for not taking the cue and being obsessed with stock markets, it hasn’t been able to entirely shun the lure of greater returns.
The income tax returns filed by the CPI-M from the year 2002 to 2006 shows a substantial income from interests and dividends.
When the markets were bullish in 2006 and the Sensex crossed 14000, the party got Rs 1.92 crore from interest and dividends and a good part of it were earnings from investments in mutual funds.
So why the doublespeak?
"I don't think there is anything wrong in party investing money in mutual fund because mutual funds give more interest than the banks. We have invested only in public sector," MK Pandhe, General Secretary, Centre for Indian Trade Unions, said.
Pandhe’s explanation is interesting given that the same logic of greater returns was rejected by the Left when the government decided to park 30 per cent of surplus funds of Navratna and Miniratna PSU's in equity-based mutual funds.
The Left Front was up in arms and their opposition to exposing employee provident funds to the vagaries of the stock markets is well documented.
"Without earning more, pension quantum will not be higher and that is what we are worried about," Pandhe explained.
Importantly the Left made substantial investments in the US-64 scheme of the UTI and like many others had their fingers burnt in US-64 fiasco of 2001.
But when it comes to money, the communists are also saying its money, honey.
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