FE Editorial : Too many messages
The Financial Express: Jan 22 2013, 00:38 IST
After Congress heir apparent Rahul Gandhi used the party’s Chintan Shivir to position himself as the ultimate insider-outsider railing against a system that allows a chief minister “to appoint a teacher” and one which is “designed to keep people with knowledge out” and to “maintain the status quo”, it’s easy to see the weekend retreat as a strong affirmation that the party is behind the government’s recent moves to re-start the stalled economic reforms programme. More so when you look at recent moves like allowing FDI in multi-brand retail or to free up diesel prices in a controlled manner—our lead story today quotes petroleum minister Veerappa Moily as saying there will be no diesel subsidies after two years (these add up to around R1,00,000 crore a year right now) as oil PSUs will regularly hike prices though it needs to be pointed out that the government notification to oil PSUs says nothing of the sort.
The problem with all of this, including Rahul Gandhi’s speech, is that with so many messages floating around, it’s difficult to isolate the central one. If it was about the importance of education, you just have to juxtapose the findings of the latest Pratham survey about the dramatic fall in educational outcomes in rural India to know that the Right to Education Act is part of the problem, not the solution; if it was about the commitment to raise agricultural growth to over 4%, you have to see the havoc created by policies that drive out
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