Sonia
Gandhi flummoxed the nation and the international community
by not accepting the prime minister''s post. And she did
not stop at that. She went on to deliver a doosra by annointing
Manmohan Singh as the prime minister and a teesra by appointing
P Chidambaram as the finance minister.
The
good thing about Manmohan Singh is that he posses a rare
prime ministerial virtue, which is social sensitivity.
He understands and cares for the needs of the poor, the
downtrodden and the dispossessed. That should stand him
in good stead.
The
bad thing about Chidambaram is that he tends to play to
the gallery. However, having lost and won parliamentary
elections from a backyard constituency named Sivaganga,
he should have by now known the needs and concerns of
the poor, the downtrodden and the dispossessed. That should
stand him in good stead.
Unlike
in the old socialistic days, the poor are no longer singing
the old cliched song about the ''the rich getting richer
and the poor getting poorer.'' Today, they do not seem
to give a damn about the rich getting richer, as long
as the poor do not get poorer. This is the task cut out
for Singh and Chidambaram not an unenviable task,
if it is only approached with a proper frame of mind and
attitude.
Accordingly,
the preamble to the common minimum programme (CMP) says
that it plans to work for ''progressive forces, for parties
wedded to the welfare of farmers, agricultural labour,
weavers, workers and weaker sections of society, for parties
irrevocably committed to the daily well-being of the common
man across the country.''
To
provide employment, the new government proposes to enact
a National Employment Guarantee Act immediately. This
will provide a legal guarantee of at least 100 days of
employment, to begin with, on asset-creating public works
programmes every year at minimum wages for at least one
able-bodied person in every rural, urban poor and lower
middle class household. In the interim, a massive food-for-work
programme will be started.
The
government also proposes to establish a National Commission,
which will examine the problems facing enterprises in
the unorganised, informal sector. The Commission will
be asked to make appropriate recommendations to provide
technical, marketing and credit support to these enterprises.
A national fund will be created for this purpose.
The
administration will revamp the functioning of the Khadi
and Village Industries Commission and launch new programmes
for the modernisation of the coir, handlooms, powerlooms,
garments, rubber, cashew, handicrafts, food processing,
sericulture, wool development, leather, pottery and other
cottage industries.
The
new dispensation will give the highest investment, credit
and technological priority to the continued growth of
agriculture, horticulture, aquaculture, floriculture,
afforestation, dairy farming and agro-processing that
will significantly add to the creation of new jobs.
This is the new team''s intent spelt out in the CMP. The
team could also seriously consider schemes articulated
by president APJ Abdul Kalam, which has come to be known
as provision of urban amenities to rural areas (PURA)
and has been endorsed and finalised by the earlier government.
The
essence of PURA is that it boosts economic growth and
development by providing urban amenities in selected rural
clusters around selected rural towns. This will stimulate
further economic activities and generate a ripple effect
in the surrounding areas.
PURA
is based on the concept that villages around a town have
an in-built potential to develop rapidly and if infrastructure
facilities are extended to these villages, they not only
develop but become growth centres for adjacent areas too.
This will essentially augment the existing development
schemes of the cen-tral and state governments and meet
infrastructure gaps through funding from PURA.
The
implementation of PURA begins with preparation of a detailed
project re-port for each of the selected cluster, which
would zero in on various infrastructure facilities to
be created in their respective cluster. The facilities
could range from provision of power supply, water supply,
road and transportation facil-ities, telecom, internet
and IT servic-es to upgrading existing schools to the
next higher level, health facilities and marketing facilities
for agricultural produce.
Further,
while programmes for expan-sion of secondary and technical
educa-tion in the rural areas have been under implementation,
encouragement to private sector to either set up new technical
training institutes or up-grade the existing IITs / polytechnics
that are located in the identified clus-ters would be
encouraged.
In
all, 5000 rural clusters, each consisting of 10 to 15
villages will be covered under PURA over five years. Every
year, work on about 1,000 clusters will be started and
each cluster will be fully developed over 2 to 3 years.
In this, the most backward towns with low number of elec-tricity
connections, common literacy rates, low percentage of
households availing piped water have been given preference.
In hilly areas, where there are no to towns, the district
headquarter towns would be taken up for identifying rural
clusters. Till date, 826 towns have been identified around
which rural clusters are to be taken up.
Thus,
while the task is cut out for Singh and Chidambaram, the
blueprint for action has been drawn up under the CMP and
PURA. All the duo need to do now is to stick to the plan,
keeping in mind that
in a democracy, the interests of the majority comes first
and in this election the majority which comprises the
under privileged have spoken.
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