Reinvent India: Reorient India
Time has come for reinventing India by setting a development-centric national agenda and move away from centralization
Following are the points discussed in the Bharat Rashtra Samiti meet presided by BRS supremo and Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Thursday in Nagpur.
India needs a qualitative and momentous change. There is a political vacuum as the present ruling coalition and the projected alternative, Congress can not provide the momentum that India needs.
Also Read
National agenda has to be changed and routine budgets year after year and usual methods and conventional thinking will not bring any big changes.
Let us not talk of ‘Best practices’…. Let us think of ‘Next practices’. Country needs a new direction as we are in 75H year since independence and still we are struggling for basic minimum needs. Significant chunk of our people are still workless and poor.
There are countries that were poorer than us but they have achieved remarkable growth by leveraging their economies to great extents.
China has consistently maintained a high growth rate from 1979 onwards with a very rapid growth from 1992 onwards continuously for more than 25 years. The GDP of China was less than that of India till 1971. Now it is 5.5 times of India GDP. Why we could not do it?
East Asian Tigers like South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan and ASEAN countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Philippines etc achieved miraculous growth. Japan rose from ashes to become a country with one of the highest per capita income in the world.
Two National Political Parties and the present political system failed the nation with their centripetal behaviourby centralising all powers and the states are becoming worse than municipalities.
What is required is what suits our country. Can’t we leverage the wealth and inner strength of our country and its economy? What is stopping us? It is not an insurmountable problem, but it is a mindset issue. If we have to develop India, we have to empower the states.
Time has come for reinventing India by setting a development-centric national agenda and move away from centralization.
We have to get rid of poverty of thought and plan big instead of incremental thinking! Out of the box thinking is the need of the hour.
Reform Agenda
Structural changes to leverage the country’s strength
Economic reforms
Constitutional reforms
Electoral reforms
Judicial reforms
Administrative & Governance reforms
1. Economic reforms
Bring policies for higher FDI inflows. These include developing SEZ like China, stable tax regime and no retrospective changes in laws.
Improving Ease of Doing Business, removing restrictions on foreign investments, resolving issues that hinder growth. For example, removing bottlenecks by improving container handling capacity and turn-around time at ports, improving average speed on NHs and Freight traffic on rail, reducing time to get customs clearance etc. (In India average speed on highways is 50 Km per hour compared to 80 Km per hour in Japan and South Korea and 95 to 115 in U.K. and USA. In India rail freight traffic moves at 24 km per hour whereas in countries like USA, Japan and Australia it is 80 Km per hour.
Every Indian should be a proud tax payer and partner in nation building. He may voluntarily pay even if it is just 1 Rupee. IT exemption limit should be raised to Rs 5 lakhs. (Tax paid by this group is less than Rs 25,000 crores)
Income from allied agriculture activities like Dairying, fisheries, piggery, poultry, goat and sheep rearing should be exempt from tax like agriculture.
Re-examine the existing FRBM limit and reorient the credit limits to our present day requirement.
(China had leveraged the credit from public sector banks to fund infrastructure. Many countries have more debt than their GDP: USA 106%, Japan 237%, Singapore 109%, Italy 133%)
2. Constitutional Reforms
More devolution of funds to states: Instead of 41 % the states should get 50% by transferring the funding of state list subjects from centre.
A permanent Finance Commission
For Assessing and leveraging the Finance of Centre
For Assessing and leveraging the Finance of States
3. Electoral Reforms
Term of elected Government to be discussed
All state and central election shall be held simultaneously and within a period of 6 months.
In case a government falls due to some reason, next election shall be held for balance period only.
4. Judicial Reforms
Necessary judicial reforms need to be brought to improve the delivery of justice.
5. Administrative and Governance Reforms
Making reform in DOPT Policies to suit the need for leveraging India. Officers shall be in position to work on other states on need basis.
Officers should be allowed to give preference to work in home state.
Salaries/remuneration of lower level employees like Anganwadi workers and Helpers, Home Guards, ASHA workers etc shall be increased to dignified level.
Planning Commission should guide the states in setting their priorities and states should be free to take up their own programmes.
Actionable Agenda for Change
Agriculture
The profitability and productivity in agriculture is low. There is g huge gap between farmers’ and consumers’ price. Farmers do not get enough income to take care of their families. Crop insurance and debt waivers have not helped.
Investment Support of Rs.10000/- per acre (@ Rs.5000/- per crop per season for both Kharif and Rabi). This will be about 2.14 lakh crore for a sown area of 27.9 crore acres in Kharif and 14.92 crore acres in Rabi in 2020-21.
Increase MSP by Rs.500 /- or 1/3 more of existing MSP
Thereafter the MSP should be increased every year by linking to price index as in case of employees’ salaries.
Based on agro-climatic advantage of each area, there should be area-wise crop colonies to grow specific crops
Connect NREGA with agriculture sector to enable 50 % of labour payment from NREGS to increase profitability.
Irrigation
India has 40 crore acres arable land and only 5.5 crore acreof land is under canal irrigation.
India has 70,000 TMC of surface water, whereas we can provide irrigation to each acre of arable land with only 40,000 TMC of water.
Every state can be allocated water for their requirement.
Drinking water
Our people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water. It also leads to heavy disease burden and loss of income to the poor.
Water supply to every village (at village point) in the country within 5 to 6 years
It may cost about Rs 8 to 10 lakh crores.
Health
Improve the dignity and health of pregnant women and reduce the MMR and IMR by assistance like KCR Kit (Rs.12,000 for male child / Rs 13000 for girl child + Kit) of Telangana
Improvise infrastructure in PHC / CHC / District Hospitals/Area Hospitals to handle deliveries
Increase number of medical seats in the country
Environment
Our forests are depleting day by day and Year by Year. Aim green cover of 40 % (at least 33 %).At present India has a green cover of 21.34%.
R&D
R & D should be re-oriented to leverage the assets of the country for economic development.
Even Mountains, Wastelands, Sea coast, River etc are assets.
NOTE ON THE RAIL CONNECTIVITY CONSTRAINT IN MAJOR COALFIELDS
There are 3 major coalfields with very huge coal production potential which have been opened up several years ago but no rail connectivity has been established so far. They are:
i) North Karanpura (Jharkhand)
> Tori-Shivpur-Kathotia, BG triple line North Karanpura Coalfields in Jharkhand: 93 KMs
ii) Mand-Raigarh (Chattisgarh)
>» Bhupdeopur-KorbaDharamjai – about 180 kms (East Corridor) and Gevra Road to Pendra Road (West Corridor)
ii) IB Valley (Odisha)
> Jharusquda-Barpall (for Gopalpur-Manoharpur block)
– BG double line in IB Valley coalfields (Basundhara- Garjanbahal part) in Odisha, length 53 Km
Coal India can produce about 300 MT per year from the above three major coalfields.
Even though Coal India has deposited the money with railways 10- 15 years ago for construction, Railways have not taken up any steps for connectivity.
India importing coal in spite of huge availability is a shame.
