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`Feel good' is no good, says Congress MP

By Our Special Correspondent

CHANDIGARH, JAN. 31. Senior Congress leader and MP from Chandigarh, Pawan Kumar Bansal, today alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party's "feel good'' propaganda was "contrived to mislead the people".

Addressing a press conference here this afternoon, Mr. Bansal charged that hundreds of crores of rupees were being blown up on the "India Shining" advertisements, though the reality was quite different.

Mr. Bansal said that nothing could be farther from truth than the Prime Minister's repeated claims that one crore jobs were being created every year. This was falsified by the Economic Survey, 2002- 2003 and the National Sample Survey, 57th round, which had only "confirmed what every unemployed young person knows from bitter experience: against 1 .5 crore young men and women groping for a job only 1/5th of them manage one, that also not necessarily fully gainful''. The horrifying scenario was that more and more people were losing jobs.

Small-scale industry was the biggest sufferer with entrepreneurs losing business and labour facing retrenchment, Mr. Bansal said. The unemployment rate even among the educated youth was increasing, he added.

Mr. Bansal pointed out that the growth rate in the last three years had been at a low of 4.4 to 5.6 per cent but the Government was highlighting the figures of only the last quarter to claim eight per cent growth.

He further said that scams (involving over Rs.70,000 crores) have been the hallmark of the BJP-led Government, demolishing the high moral platform that has always been claimed by the BJP, he added.

And to further mislead the people after its decision to go in for early elections, the Vajpayee regime has announced sops worth Rs.11,000 crores on January 8 and 9 and presented an Interim Railway Budget. "All this smacks of dishonesty... The BJP spin doctors must realise that the people are politically and socially more conscious and aware than they believe them to be," he said.

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