PM: Slow growth can hit welfare schemes

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has cautioned that slow growth can impact resources needed to implement inclusive programmes, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Dec 28, 2012, 02:25:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has cautioned that slow growth can impact resources needed to implement inclusive programmes.

He was speaking at the National Development Council meeting on Thursday, where 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) aiming an average "more inclusive" economic growth rate of 8% was approved.

The average economic growth in the 11th Plan was 7.9 %.

The council, chaired by the PM and having chief ministers as members, had divergent views on lowering the growth target to 8%.

Some CM such as Gujarat's Narendra Modi felt lowering the growth rate will lead to "pessimism" whereas others described the move as "realistic".

The PM acknowledged that achieving the 8% growth target would not be easy with the growth in the first year of the Plan to be less than 6% and current global economic situation remaining difficult.

"The global slowdown, combined with some domestic constraints, has meant our growth has also slowed down," he said, asking the chief ministers to provide inputs to reverse the slowdown.

Exhorting the states to aim for higher growth, Singh said, rapid growth leads to inclusiveness because it provides greater access to income and employment whereas slower rate could result in cut in welfare programmes or high fiscal deficit.

"We need 20 years of rapid growth to bring it to middle-income level," he said.

He highlighted that the immediate area of concern was implementing big-ticket infrastructure projects, especially in power sector, which are stuck because of delays in getting clearances and fuel supply.

The PM had also asked the Planning Commission to seek views of CMs on fuel supply problems for power plants and submit a report within three weeks.

At probably the last NDC before the next 2014 polls, the PM outlined the achievements of his government, including two percentage point annual reduction in poverty since 2004, when UPA came to power, which was 2.5 times faster than the rate of decline between 1993-94 and 2004-05.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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