FE Editorial : Too many messages

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The Financial Express: Jan 22 2013, 00:38 IST

private traders from the grain market and that ban farm exports from time to time, or the way cropping patterns are distorted by hiking support prices for certain crops; if it was about controlling inflation, then it’s obvious the policy that makes FCI keep three times the required stocks of foodgrain is the problem, not the solution. If the central aim, as the Jaipur Declaration proclaims, is to create 10 million jobs each year then the party would do well to ponder over whether its pro-labour-aristocracy policies are what has caused its woeful track record in job creation—while GDP grew 1.6 times between FY00 and FY05 and employment rose from 396.8 million to 457.5 million, this slowed to just 460.2 million by FY10 even though GDP grew 2 times between FY05 and FY10. And talking to any industrialist would expose the hollowness of the pledge “to create a business environment conducive to investment and entrepreneurship”.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was spot on when he said the UPA’s growth record as well as poverty-reduction record was superior to that of the NDA, but a large part of the growth came from the global surge coupled with the results of the reforms made during the NDA years. The central message from that, as well as from Rahul Gandhi’s speech, is that it’s time the UPA moved aggressively on the next stage of reforms. Only when oil sector PSUs actually raise diesel prices every month—right now, they’ve lost more through raising the cap on

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