'Plenary has put liberalisation back on rails'

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, MARCH 19. The former Prime Minister and Congress president, Mr. P. V. Narasimha Rao, has said that the Bangalore plenary of the party had adopted the right perspective of the liberalisation policy.

He was speaking at a get-together organised in his honour by the senior Congress leader and chairman of the administrative reforms commission, Mr. Haranahalli Ramaswamy. It was attended by about a dozen Ministers, former MPs and leaders of various walks of life.

Mr. Rao who was in an expansive mood, spoke on broader issues - the abiding and not the immediate - and did not refer to the current political situation at the Centre. He only spoke of the twists and turns in the last few days.

One of the achievements of the plenary was that the Congress party had brought the policy of liberalisation back on the rails, in letter and in spirit. He had presented a 10-page note to the AICC on `Liberalisation and the Public Sector' and he was glad the party had accepted it.

Mr. Rao said that coalition Governments should be formed by likeminded parties. Though after 1996 it was being said that coalitions had become inevitable, he had his own views. It could not be ``cohabitation'' among political parties. That was what was being said in France after Francois Mitterrand's Socialist Party formed a coalition with the communists which lasted only one year. Though there was nothing wrong with coalitions, they were not infallible.

Mr. Narasimha Rao said the sudden developments in the country in the last few days would distract attention from the real issues for a time. It should be seen whether the developments would necessitate early elections. At the outset, he asked whether there was any astrologer in the gathering. If any astrologer had predicted the developments of the last few days, he deserved the Bharat Ratna. Later, the former Chief Minister, Mr. Veerappa Moily, remarked that everyone of them had suffered at the hands of astrologers.

Mr. Rao reiterated that liberalisation should not mean privatisation. The public sector should remain and the private sector should meet the unmet needs of the people. He raised the question if the Chief Minister, Mr. S. M. Krishna, had the right to sell the Vidhana Soudha which belonged to the people. Those in Government were only the trustees of what belonged to the people.

Mr. Rao expressed his concern over the decline in the standard of debates in Parliament and legislatures. In the past, the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly had witnessed a scholarly debate on the privileges of legislators when the Keshav Singh case (1965) brought the Uttar Pradesh Assembly on the path of collision with the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court.Earlier, the noted economist, Dr. P. R. Brahmananda, said the economic process and policy should be kept apart from the vicissitudes of politics. Dr. Govinda Rao, director of the Institute for Social and Economic Change, said that the country was without a consensus on most issues.

The Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Mr. M. Y. Ghorpade, said that not enough had been done to bring about decentralisation in the administration in terms of the 73rd amendment to the Constitution. Villages should be insulated from political developments at higher levels. There should be total governance at the village level including collection of land revenue. Transparency was the best guard against corruption.

Mr. Veerappa Moily, who now heads the Taxation Reforms Commission, stressed the need for politicians to keep themselves abreast of knowledge.

Mr. Haranahalli Ramaswamy presented the interim report on administrative reforms to Mr. Rao. Mr. K. K. Murthy, president of the Academy of Music, in whose Chowdaiah Memorial Hall the get- together was held, also felicitated Mr. Rao.

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