It’s been a week since Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan appointed Harvard economist Gita Gopinath as his financial advisor, but the controversy over her post refuses to go away with the senior-most CPM leader VS Achuthanandan also joining the chorus in opposing her.
Interestingly, the attack on Gita, or rather Vijayan, comes from two quarters: one, the opposition and the CPM-critics who find the decision - a Marxist-Leninist party appointing a “neo-liberal” economist as its advisor - the epitome of CPM’s double standards; and two, the hardliners within the CPM, who find her economic philosophy highly objectionable.
Despite their criticism, the Congress doesn’t have a problem with her because it’s during their rule that Gita made her first public appearance in the state - at a global investment meet - but doesn't want to lose the opportunity to ridicule the Marxists for their alleged duplicity. For the party critics, it’s yet another convenient handle to hit at Pinarayi and company. For Achuthanandan, ideologically it’s odious.
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