The Hindu : Employment, agriculture key economic issues

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 23, 2004

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National

Employment, agriculture key economic issues

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 22. Employment and agriculture are the key economic issues in the Congress manifesto released today and the party has set its sights on a high 8 to 10 per cent rate of sustained economic growth.

"Yuva rozgar" (youth employment), "grameen vikas" (rural development) and "arthik navotthan" (economic resurgence) are three of the six basic tenets for governance laid down. Samajik sadbhavana (social harmony), mahila sashaktikaran (women's empowerment) and saman avsar (equal opportunities) will be the foundation of all policies.

The Congress makes its stance clear on strengthening the public sector, especially in infrastructure and taking a selective approach to disinvestment policies. "The Congress will approach privatisation selectively. Disinvestment will not be resorted to merely to raise revenue to meet short-term targets as the NDA has been doing," the document states. The disinvestment revenues will be used for designated social development programmes and the party will ensure that disinvestment increases competition and consumer welfare.

Making a commitment to improve power supply to every household over the next five years, it promises to use the country's foreign exchange reserves "creatively" to significantly expand public investment in power generation. It says the public sector has to play a key role in generation while the private sector takes on an increased role in distribution.

In the crucial area of employment, the manifesto says the main requirement is to revive economic growth and sustain it throughout the country at between 8 and 10 per cent annually for well over a decade. The party will adopt policies to expand employment in the organised sector which has "fallen precipitously" in the last five years. Besides, it will immediately enact a National Employment Guarantee Act to provide legal guarantee for at least 100 days of employment on asset-creating public works programmes every year at minimum wage for every rural household. As an indicator of how seriously it takes commitment employment growth, the party has also pledged to release an annual Rozgar Report to the Nation on May 1.

It will place a greater thrust on labour intensive exports of textiles, handicrafts, gems and jewellery, leather, software, engineering and consumer goods to boost employment. The textile industry will be given special focus in view of the increased competition in world markets from January 2005 as mandated by the World Trade Organisation.

The manifesto promises an "agriculture first" strategy in resource allocation. Public investment in agriculture will be stepped up substantially with focus in the backward and poor regions. This will cover irrigation, electrification, godowns, marketing, research and extension. In addition, it assures that the entire rural credit system based on cooperatives will be restored to health. A time-bound programme for restoring all public tubewells to good working condition wherever required will be started and pace of constructing new irrigation wells in poorer districts of the country will be accelerated.

The feasibility of an Agricultural Stabilisation Fund involving a system of direct support or income support to farmers especially in the ecologically vulnerable regions of the country will be examined. This will be in addition to implementation of farm insurance schemes for both crops and cattle.

As for food and nutrition security, it says there has been far too much tampering in recent years with the public distribution system.

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