The Hindu Business Line : UPA to focus on farm, infrastructure

WITH the initial Government-making hurdles now behind it, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government led by economist-politician Dr Manmohan Singh gets down to the brass-tacks, laying thrust on agriculture and physical infrastructure such as roads, airport and social infrastructure like education, employment and health insurance.

Senior Government officials who prepared a background note on the state of the economy for the new Government's budget-making exercise told Business Line that the public work programmes initiated by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) such as the Golden Quadrilateral, Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana, the President Dr A.P.J.Abdul Kalam's brainchild PURA (Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas), Sarvasiksha Abiyhan for providing elementary education and health insurance to the unorganised workforce, both in farm and in off-farm activities, would continue to be funded.

They said even the Left parties would not resist such welfare measures as they were designed for the poorest of the poor and had enormous employment potentials. They cited Dr Manmohan Singh's singular praise on golden quadrilateral scheme as having tangible benefits for the economy.

Modernisation of airports, particularly Mumbai and Delhi, and the Open Sky policy in the civil aviation sector would also be the immediate priority of the new Government, the sources said.

Stating that the benefits of several development-oriented measures initiated by the NDA Government would have spillover effects in the years to come, the first budget of the new Government would definitely find the resources to persist with these programmes.

They said the core issue of disinvestment of public sector units (PSUs) would be `relegated' to the backburner for sometime till the ruffled feelings set off in the wake of recent divestment of profit-making PSUs, particularly oil companies, get subsided.

Officials said the bureaucrats, who will serve as bridges between the NDA Government and the new UPA Government, would ensure that the economic reforms that had employment potential and capacity to unleash entrepreneurial activities across a broad spectrum of the economy would continue unimpeded with funds being no constraints.

They said the new Government was also not unduly worried over the happenings in the country's capital markets in view of the mosaic of coalition partners and their controversial statements as the markets would soon learn to live with these distractions. They contended that the previous Government had built enough checks and balances to ensure that market manipulators or bear cartels did not get away with their nefarious activities.

They said even as recently as May 17 when the Sensex crashed to its nadir , the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) indicated its readiness and willingness to provide liquidity to banks in order to help them meet their payment obligations and it bolstered the market a bit. There was also the market regulator- the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which had been monitoring the market and undertaking intervention measures.

To add to these safeguards, recently the surveillance clauses for market regulations were also incorporated into the rules by two internal security agencies— the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the sources said adding that these agencies monitor the pumping of funds into the capital market and their primary remit was to check whether the funds funnelled into the market or moved out of the market were getting diverted and utilised for money-laundering or to finance terrorist activities.

The sources also recalled the former Disinvestment Minister Mr Arun Shourie's meeting with the IB Chief following the bear cartel operations at the height of the initial public offerings (IPO) of ONGC a couple of months ago.

They said with the new Government kicking off its tenure at a time when the macro economic fundamentals remained strong and sound, the priorities postulated in the Common Minimum Programme would be implemented with focussed thrust on agriculture, rural development, employment generation and building of social and physical infrastructure.

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