Front Page

Advani promises new ‘GDP’

NEW DELHI: Dubbing the United Progressive Alliance government “non-functional” and “internally paralysed,” BJP leader L.K. Advani on Friday asked the business community to develop a long-term perspective for India Inc. and the nation so that bold and innovative measures could be initiated to make the current growth story more equitable and sustainable.

In a message virtually unveiling the National Democratic Alliance’s economic agenda at the luncheon session of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s 80th annual general meeting here, Mr. Advani promised the nation a new GDP — good ‘Governance, Development and Protection’ — as the three imperatives to benefit the “ordinary” people if his party and the NDA happened to win the mandate in the next parliamentary elections.

“It shall be our firm resolve to make good governance, development and security the trinity encapsulating our common minimum programme” to “unleash the entrepreneurial and creative energies of crores of ordinary Indians,” he said.

Promising speedier economic reforms, modernisation of airports and the railways and all-out support to manufacturing, the Leader of the Opposition and NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate called for vision from India’s political, economic and intellectual elite to gain an understanding of what the country needed.

“The tendency, especially in the political and governing class, to think of the near-term in office or of the next election, can do no good to India,” he said.

The people, Mr. Advani said, were already looking beyond the UPA government. “People are hungry for change, but they are not looking only for a change in government with some new faces replacing old ones... They want to see a big change in the way [the] government functions at all levels,” he said.

“I know for a fact that small and medium enterprises, the tiny sector, the informal sector where millions of entrepreneurs and workers are engaged, are impatient to see a governmental environment that helps them, rather than harassing them.”

The truth, according to Mr. Advani, was that the country’s prosperity in the post-reforms era had increased inequality in society. This, he said, was tellingly brought out by a report of the ‘National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector’ which stated that nearly 860 million Indians earned Rs. 20 a day. To drive home the point, he quoted a statement by the former RBI Governor, Bimal Jalan, that 20 richest Indians earn as much as 30 crore of the poorest in the country.

“How can we tolerate this reality? We cannot and must not. The BJP and the NDA certainly will not. We shall take bold and innovative measures to ensure that wealth is distributed across regions and across social class,” he said.

This resolve, he said, had been strengthened by Narendra Modi’s spectacular victory in Gujarat that has signalled the triumph of good governance, development and security over the politics of vote-banks.

A step in evolving a common guiding philosophy for NDA, he said, was the decision to organise a conference of Chief Ministers of all the nine NDA-ruled states in March this year.

Referring to the nuclear deal with the United States, Mr. Advani said the agreement neutralised the achievements of Pokhran II, the atomic tests of 1998, and took away India’s right to conduct nuclear tests.

The BJP wanted a joint parliamentary committee to look into the deal but the government chose to set up a committee with the Left parties to push through the agreement. The UPA and the Left parties formed the committee hoping to find a solution.

“See what is the solution,” he added.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu