By IANS
New Delhi : The era of coalitions has come to stay but there is need to ensure that smaller parties do not stall development and progress in the larger national interest, the annual conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was told Thursday.
Participating in the session on "Balancing Growth and Equity: How can democracy work," Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) general secretary Arun Jaitley said, "the role of leaders of national parties should be to convince smaller players to be concerned of larger national role."
Echoing almost similar views, Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, "No constituent should be allowed to have veto power. But, smaller parties' point of view should be also taken account and it is due to this that many projects are delayed."
As chairman of the Management Development Institute, N K Singh, former finance secretary and former Planning Commission member who moderated the discussion, said dialogue in a democracy helps remove discrepancies and as era of coalition politics is here to stay, there is a need to add more voices to the dialogue process.
Jaitley said: "Leadership is the art of decision making, not postponing in the absence of consensus."
Describing India as an imperfect democracy, which is in need of far greater refinement, Singhvi said dissonance can sometimes be good, which does not mean that "we should be going in opposite directions."
The challenge facing India is to look at institutional changes in order to make democracy more efficient and improve its quality," Singhvi said.