The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, said on Thursday that his Government was committed to controlling inflation and would not “flinch from ensuring that no wrong-doer escapes the penalties that our legal system provides” in a direct reference to the 2G spectrum scam and ‘the complaints of wrong-doings' pertaining to Commonwealth Games(CWG).

Replying to motion of thanks on the President's address to the joint sitting of the House, the Prime Minister said that the various issues raised by the members during the debate were captured in the five priorities for the Government for 2011-12 set out in her address.

On inflation He said on the foremost issue of inflation the Government policy was to ensure that “we control inflation but in a manner by which we do not hurt the growth of employment opportunities.” He said if the Government had a “ham-handed approach, we could have killed the growth process, the only source of providing jobs for our youth.”

He noted that “this delicate balance which has to be preserved between control of inflation and protection of employment” gave a feeling to the ordinary people that “we are not worried about inflation.”

Dr Singh hoped that at the end of the current fiscal year headline inflation would come down to about seven per cent with improvement in food inflation too. However, he said, “Where agriculture prices are the kingpin of the price structure, the only way we can control inflation is through increased production and productivity of agriculture”.

He promised the government's strong commitment to do everything to bolster the growth impulses in agriculture and to strengthen the growth of productivity.

Food security

He said that with the Government working to bring a Bill to consider and approve the system of National Food Security at an early date in order to provide food at sufficiently low prices coupled with the ongoing Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme would underpin the anti-poverty programmes.

Sustaining growth

Assuring members that the government was committed to achieving a growth rate of 9 to 10 per cent, Dr Singh said that the bulk of resources for this growth would come from the domestic sources, with “our savings and investment rates as high as 35 to 37 per cent” getting “every opportunity to make their contribution to sustaining the growth processes”. He said “meaningful solutions to the problems of mass poverty” could be found only “in the framework of a rapidly expanding economy.”

On 2G scam

Referring to 2G spectrum scam, the Prime Minister was defensive of the policy but faulted “the way it was implemented” which gave rise to problems. He said his government would cooperate with all investigative agencies including the CBI, PAC and the JPC to ensure that the truth came out and the guilty brought to book. He justified the policy's soundness stating that it ensured maximum tele-density to become accessible, which is reflected in the fact that the total tele-densisty has gone up from 7 per cent in March 2004 to 66 per cent in December 2010.

On Antrix-Devas deal

On the disclosures about the Antrix Corporation-Devas Multimedia Services, the Prime Minister recounted the sequence of events to open satellite services to non-government parties from 1997 and clarified that “no allocation of terrestrial spectrum has been made by the government to either Antrix or Devas, the figures of costing being quoted by some members of lakhs of crores have no basis.”

On black money, Dr Singh stressed that “we need to clean our system” and said the economic reforms of 1991 were one such bid to reduce the scope of discretionary powers of the Government so that there would be less scope for arbitrary practices and less scope for collection of black money.

Eco concerns

In a mild chastisement to development projects getting derailed by environmental concerns, he said “there is a delicate trade-off between environment and development and we need a very sensitive regulatory system”. However, he said, “We have to revisit regulatory framework to ensure that while we recognise a sound regulatory system, it must not degenerate to new way of bringing back the licence, permit raj.”

In a fervent appeal to members across the political spectrum, he said “We debate the issues and we can find fault but the message should not go out that India is adrift, that has lost its way and that the enthusiasm for getting this country moving forward is something which is no longer in evidence.”

The Prime Minister also touched upon internal security and foreign policy and later made an identical reply in the Rajya Sabha post-lunch, with Parliament adopting the motion of thanks on the President's joint address to the House.

geeyes@thehindu.co.in

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