Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said sound policy, not slogans will help fulfil aspirations of people.

The statement was an obvious reference to the demand by the Opposition to waive farm loans.

Releasing the ‘Strategy for New India @75’ prepared by NITI Aayog, Jaitley said slogans have transient life and people soon realise that they cannot be implemented. There is an obvious debate on whether sound policy pays more or slogans pay more, “In democracy these debates will always arise. The aspirational people who have high level of aspiration and very low level of patience now will point out on day two or day three about the inability to convert slogans into reality,” Jaitley said. Sound policy will always put economy on track in which “it will get perpetually people out of poverty and give them better quality of life.”

“The course we have adopted is now gradually perfected itself with the Indian model in which you grow faster, you utilise the resource of the state in order to pull millions of people out of poverty, give them better quality of life...each decision is really aimed in this direction,” Jaitley said adding that India in the past has squandered several opportunities. “Fortunately, we are on the cusp of making history wherein the last few decades India has started making full utilisation of those opportunities and that seems to be the course to go ahead,” he said while acknowledging that the strategy document will be fruitful for the government. The document aims to accelerate GDP growth to 8 per cent and propel the country towards a $5-trillion economy by 2030.

Strategy for higher growth

The document listed four key steps, among others, for achieving this GDP growth rate.

The first step is increasing the investment rate as measured by gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) from present 29 per cent to 36 per cent of GDP by 2022. About half of this increase must come from public investment which is slated to increase from 4 per cent to 7 per cent of GDP. Government savings have to move into positive territory.

The second step is related to agriculture where emphasis must shift to converting farmers to ‘agripreneurs’ by further expanding e-National Agriculture Markets (e-NAMs) and replacing the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act with the Agricultural Produce and Livestock Marketing (APLM) Act.

The third step is about adopting ‘Zero Budget Natural Farming’ (ZBNF) techniques that reduce costs, improve land quality and increase farmers’ incomes. And the fourth step deals with hastening of codification of labour laws to ensure maximum employment creation and a massive effort to scale up apprenticeships.

comment COMMENT NOW