M.P. & PRESIDENT,
NATIONALIST CONGRESS PARTY

ON 30™ MAY7, 2003,
AT Talkatora Indoor Stadium
NEW DELHI


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The NDA government has been blowing hot and cold on the Indo - Pak front, which is not expected from a government that sincerely and honestly wants to resolve long pending issues and pave the way for a peaceful future. The large-scale mobilization of our armed forces all along the western border last year was born out of a design to whip up a war phobia within India. Irresponsible statement emanating from our foreign minister who recently advocated 'hot pursuit' and 'pre-emptive' action is nothing but hollow bravado.

The many initiatives that have been taken up to resolve the bilateral issues by dialogue are welcome and should continue. The NCR fully supports the recent efforts by the government of India and the Pakistani government to open their doors wide for a dialogue on peace and good neighbourly relations.

The same approach holds good for other neighbours as well. It is our contention that we need to have a well-balanced and pragmatic relationship with Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and China, which takes into account our neighbours' economic, political and cultural concerns. It is our considered opinion that peace is essential for prosperity in the Indian sub continent. Good neighbourly relations automatically mean that less and less is spent in defending ourselves against each other and the resources saved will find a well deserved outlet for developmental spending for all the countries of the subcontinent.

We have been concentrating for long on the bleak international scenario and the need for good neighbourly relations; trust me, the national scenario is even bleaker. When we look at the situation confronting us in our vast rural areas, in our overcrowded cities and into the despairing eyes of our hungry and jobless poor, we come face to face with the stark realities of our nation. Let us take the problems that confront us on the national scene one by one and review the present government's performance on each of them.

India is predominantly an agrarian country, where a vast majority of our population depends on agriculture for its livelihood, almost 70 percent to be precise. Our economy, unlike that of the industrial nations' of the world is agriculture driven contrary to the perceived understanding in many quarters that it is industry driven. In such a scenario it is our firm belief,

NCR's firm belief that the Indian economy cannot affect a turn around without stabilizing on the agrarian front. While this is so, we stand strong and firm on this common logic that India's agrarian economy needs revitalizing. The NDA government at the center has been bungling on this front once too often.

With the terms of trade going against agriculture for the past decade, the government has succeeded in making matters worse by steadily mismanaging the agrarian sector. It has seen a scaling down of subsidies, steady decline in investment in the agriculture sector, hike in the price of fertilizers and other farm inputs like electricity, decline in procurement prices, and resulting in the overall impoverishment of the farmers. Hunger has invaded our rural hinterland today, stalking the poor and impoverished farmer and his family. This is so when the godowns of the government are overflowing with food grains. Somebody told me that if we stack the sacks of food grain in stock with the government, it would reach all the way to the moon. But, our rural poor are still dying for want of food. I wonder if these policies can ever be called pro-poor and farmer friendly.

Standing crops are being abandoned and farmers are committing suicide today. Why is this so, I ask YOU! This is because of wrong policies and it is NOT right. This isn't the road to progress. This is the road to DISASTER.

This sort of disaster could be averted if the government at the center takes a pro-farmer stand and initiates a process which would expand internal, as well as external markets. Barriers working against the farming community should be broken, and necessary assistance should be provided for storing, selling and exporting their products. All the hindrances created in the free movement of the food grains between the states needs to be removed. If all these impediments were dismantled, then it would help in building a good network of internal and external markets. Through this process only our farmers can be prosperous and become capable to march on the road of progress.

Having said that, I will now move on to the other main source of livelihood for a large section of our masses, namely, employment in government, private, industrial and the service sectors. Employment opportunities have been progressively dwindling, resulting in less and less jobs being available. How has this come about? Let me attempt to explain. In the past three to four decades, we have made reasonable progress in delivering improved social services, which includes education. While this has been far from being ideal, the number of educated in our country has risen, enlarging the population eligible for employment. In contrast to this, the quantum of jobs and employment opportunities have either remained stagnant, or come down. This has resulted in large-scale joblessness and unemployment.