The BRS agenda: Reinvent India, Reorient India

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, K Chandrashekhar Rao said.

Hyderabad: Bharat Rashtra Samithi President and Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao on Sunday unveiled his plan for the party’s way forward and its agenda for the country.

“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,” he said, stressing that India needed a qualitative and momentous change. There is a political vacuum as the present ruling coalition and the projected alternative, the Congress, cannot provide the momentum that India needs, Chandrashekhar Rao noted in a document issued at a press conference at Nanded.

“Let us not talk of ‘Best practices’…. Let us think of ‘Next practices’. The country needs a new direction as we are in the 75th year since independence and still we are struggling for basic minimum needs. Significant chunk of our people are still workless and poor,” he said.

“There are countries that were poorer than us but they have achieved remarkable growth by leveraging their economies to great extents,” he said, citing the example of countries like China and Japan.

“Two national political parties and the present political system failed the nation with their centripetal behaviour by 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 a mindset issue,” he said, adding that for India to develop, States had to be empowered.

“Time has come for reinventing India by setting a development-centric national agenda and moving away from centralization,” he said.

THE REFORM AGENDA

1. Structural changes to leverage the country’s strength:

• Economic reforms
• Constitutional reforms
• Electoral reforms
• Judicial reforms
• Administrative & Governance reforms

2. 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.
• Every Indian should be a proud tax payer and partner in nation building. He may voluntarily pay even if it is just Re.1. IT exemption limit should be raised to Rs.5 lakh. (Tax paid by this group is less than Rs.25,000 crore)
• 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.

3. 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 finances of the Centre and of States

4. Electoral Reforms

• Term of elected Government to be discussed
• All State and Central elections 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.

5. Judicial Reforms

Necessary judicial reforms need to be brought to improve the delivery of justice.

6. 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 States in setting priorities and States should be free to take up their own programmes.

ACTIONABLE AGENDA FOR CHANGE

Agriculture

Profitability and productivity in agriculture is low. Farmers do not get enough income to take care of their families.

• 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 1/3rd 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 acre of 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 crore.

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.13,000 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.