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| 11th Plan targets 10 percent annual growth | | India is 20 years behind China: Ahluwalia | |
B L KAK
NEW DELHI, OCT. 29: Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, has acknowledged that India is 20 years behind China. He has attributed the slow growth to the fact that it is an open democracy answerable to a variety of constituencies, unlike its neighbor to the north.
In a media interview, Ahluwalia has emphasized that among the important areas that India will have to focus on are energy, infrastructure, health, education and agriculture. One particular concern that he spoke was the question of water and its use. "Economizing the use of water is going to be even more important than the use of energy", he said, adding that although the situation was by and large fine, there were chronic water scarcity areas in the country.
The Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, who is supposed to scrutinize and analyse the country's political and economic issues, has maintained that there is no difference of opinion on most major economic issues between the Manmohan Singh government and the Left parties except in the area of labour reform. He was quoted as saying: The difference of opinion tends to get exaggerated by the press in order to make good copy. It is a coalition government and different parties have different perceptions.
Ahluwalia said: "I would say there are one or two areas where the Left parties have a different view and therefore they are seen as sensitive. One of them is they are clearly not in favour of privatization of the public sector if it is making profits. We accept that constraint. I don't think it is a big problem". He said that as long as the private sector was free to expand it is not important whether the public sector units that do exist are going to get privatized. It is not going to stop India from growing rapidly.
Ahluwalia pointed out that the Left parties were "concerned about the labour law reform which is perhaps the more controversial issue. We are in discussion with them and with the unions". He said: "The basic idea being that we are to become competitive globally we ought to bring our labour laws in line with other countries. Everything else that I have said about agriculture, infrastructure, health, education there is no difference between the Left parties and the government".
The Planning Commission has lately been preparing for the upcoming 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012), which lays out priorities for the country's economic management every five years. One key feature of the approach paper for the plan will be the economic growth projection. India has been feverishly growing eight plus percent in recent times and there are clear indications that it could breach the nine percent mark and in fact touch a double digit growth at 10 percent.
Ahluwalia said that the 11th Five Year Plan targets an annual growth of 10 percent. "The target is 10 percent but we know over the next five years we will have to achieve an average of nine percent eventually tending to be 10 percent", he said.
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