By Mahmood Asim, TwoCircles.net,
In the blink of 14th Lok Sabha election, when everybody is claiming high about his agenda of development as poll plank, Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association (JNUTA) organized a panel discussion on ‘Economic agenda of political parties’ to do a reality-check, in School of Social Sciences auditorium, JNU on Thursday, 3rd March. Representative of major political parties including Congress, BJP, AAP, CPI (M) and NCP were invited to put forth the economic agenda of their parties.
JNUTA President Prof. Arun Kumar first presented the issues faced by Indian economy like social infrastructure, corruption, decline of growth rate, and questioned the Panelists whether our development model is flawed. Before inviting the leaders he posed several questions about the performance of their respective party and requested to put the economic agenda of his party forward in the light of those questions.
The questions fired to the Congress were that despite some credit and achievement why the economy has been in a crisis for the last 12 quarters, together with the questions about Scams and Corruption. Representing the congress party, Union Cabinet Minister of Commerce and Industry, Anand Sharma refuted the charge against UPA government citing the data from various government documents. Providing the reason for decline of growth rate he reminded the analysts not to forget the global scenario of economic slowdown. “Despite some fluctuation we have increased a lot in several walks of life including employment, health, infrastructure, food and security etc” said Sharma. Refering to the finding of Gates Foundation, he mentioned that 150 million people have been brought above poverty line during UPA regime.
Speaking on behalf of the AAP Party Senior Leader Prashant Bhushan cited harsh criticism on the economic policy of both UPA and NDA. Among some questions for AAP posed by JNUTA were “will an anti-corruption plank solve all the problems?” Bhushan questioned the GDP growth rate in furious tone saying “we don’t care about mindless GDP Growth when malnutrition, unemployment and farmers suicide is rampant”. Describing his party agenda he added “We want an economic policy focused on Mass benefits and which is environment friendly rather than serving the interest of some corporate and elites”, clarifying that the party is against private monopoly.
Quoting the difference of NDA from UPA National Spokesperson of BJP, Nirmala Sitaraman cleared the air of questions of JNUTA. Going into the details of farmers’ plights particularly in MP and Maharashtra she said “Swaminathan Committee on agriculture is kept in cold file and its recommendations are yet to be implemented”. Citing the inflation she accused UPA-II saying “inflation remains uncontrolled in UPA-II, if there are no jobs then what is the meaning of growth”. It was interesting to note that Gujarat development model was not discussed in the economic agenda of BJP rather it was mocked by several Panelists here.
Nationalist Congress Party’s (NCP), an ally of Congress, General Secretary, D.P Tripathi started his argument by ridiculing the development model of Narendra Modi. He said “according to me Kerala model is the best development model as education, health, law & order are the very essential for economic growth”. While encouraging the private sector he simultaneously mocked the public sector saying “public sector has nothing to do with public”. Tapan Sen of CPI (M) reassured his party’s economic agenda saying “we have faith in our ideology and will carry forward the same”. Sen added the CPI(M) demands to reformulate the policies about deregulation, privatization and contractualisation of the workers, and encouragement of domestic investment.
The question-answer session, in which several teachers and students expressed their dissatisfaction on economic policies of the country carried out by both UPA and NDA, and other parties, a senior lady among the audience described the miserable and deteriorating condition of Indian economy, asking the speakers “where do you people want to drag the Indian economy and its poor people”.