Industry & Economy
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Budget
‘Proof of more inclusive growth’
To return to the India growth story, I am of the firm belief that we owe our sustained progress to the policy of economic reforms first ushered in by a Congress Government and now carried forward by the UPA Government. If 1984 and 1991 were turning points in the history of India’s economy, 2004 was another turning point. Confident that high growth was sustainable, the UPA Government had declared in the National Common Minimum Programme its intention to make gr
owth more inclusive. Sir, I ask this House, respectfully, to judge our record on inclusive growth from the following sample of facts:
• agricultural credit doubled in the first two years of this Government and is poised to reach a level of Rs 2,40,000 crore by March 2008.
• the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has proved to be a historic measure of empowerment of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and, especially, of women.
• the Mid Day Meal Scheme is the largest school lunch programme in the world covering 11.4 crore children.
• the National Rural Health Mission has taken improved health care to rural India by strengthening the primary health centres of which 8,756 have been made 24 x 7.
• the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya Scheme has enrolled 1,82,000 girls in residential schools, thus helping to bridge the gender gap in education.
Bharat Nirman has made impressive progress in 2007-08. This ambitious programme is now over 1,000 days old. At the current pace, on each day of the year 290 habitations are provided with drinking water and 17 habitations are connected through an all weather road.
On each day of the year 52 villages are provided with telephones and 42 villages are electrified. On each day of the year 4,113 rural houses are completed.
Mr Speaker, just as I sat down to write this speech, I received a slim volume titled “Indira Gandhi - Selected Sayings”. Within minutes, I found this gem and I quote, “The more one does, the more one attempts, the more one is capable of doing”. What I have narrated so far is indeed proof of more inclusive growth, but if you ask me “can we do better?”, my answer would be “we can and we should.”
Budget 2008-09 is about raising our sights and doing more and doing better.
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