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Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President, Mr L K Advani, defended his
party's Swadeshi doctrine at a meeting with industry leaders on
Monday, criticising the unrestricted entry of multinationals into
India, which he said had worsened the problem of corruption and
alarmed Indian businessmen.
Delivering the inaugural address of the Confederation of Indian
Industry's (CII) annual session here, Mr Advani said: "Don't we all
see how unchecked and non-transparent entry of multinationals in
the name of globalisation has not only increased corruption at high
places but has also, in many sectors, caused genuine concern and
alarm among Indian businessmen themselves?"
Mr Advani said : "It is the BJP's considered belief that foreign
capital in the form of finance, technology or managerial expertise
can at the most play a complementary and supplementary role. The
main effort and the main mobilisation of will and resources has to
come from within." At the same time, he added that the BJP was not
opposed to globalisation, foreign investment, foreign
collaborations and foreign ideas.
Countering criticisms of the Swadeshi concept, Mr Advani said: "How
can faith in our own national capabilities and resources be termed
a s retrograde? How can BJP's opposition to that brand of
globalisation which undermines the Indian business class, lays
waste our industrial and agricultural base and drain away our
wealth in a new form be called obstructionist?"
Mr Advani said he disagreed with the tendency to formulate India's
economic objectives in terms of GDP growth rates, export earning,
forex reserves, inflation, fiscal deficit or any such impersonal
quantitative parameters. What was important was to ensure to
qualitative social transformation, he said.
"An eight per cent GDP growth rate is a necessary means to an end
but it is not an end in itself. The focus of our policy and
programmes should be not GDP growth per se, but GDP growth of the
kind that yields richer and wider societal growth" he said.
While India's GDP had increased in the last 25 years, its rank on
the Human Development Index (HDI) parameter had declined from 82 to
135 from 1970 to 1997, said Mr Advani. "There has been much less
employment creation, wealth creation and asset creation in rural
areas, though the need for greater employment opportunities and
basic amenities it far more marked in rural India," he stated.
Pleading for transparency and probity in politics and the corporate
sector, Mr Advani said the industry chambers, FICCI, CII and
ASSOCHAM, should lay down guideline for good corporate governance
and ensure that their members follow guidelines that bring about
transparency and probity.
Later, Mr Murli Manohar Joshi of the BJP and Mr A B Bardhan of the
CPI, who spoke at the same meeting, said India should not follow
the IMF economic model and asserted that economic growth without
social justice was meaningless.
Mr Joshi said the flight of foreign capital from the country must
be stopped. "If you keep on inviting MNCs to put up power projects,
the power problem will not be solved. This applies for other
sectors as well," he said. Referring to the theme of the CII
national conference, "Can India raise its growth rate to eight per
cent GDP," Mr Joshi said: "What is the meaning of 8 per cent
growth? On the one hand you are talking 8 per cent growth and on
the other hand, food grain is being imported and there is a
shortage of power.
"How do you look at the issue of growth. Growth must be
commensurate with a rise in standard of living an purchasing power.
It must be accompanied by distribution of wealth. Growth without
employment is meaningless," he said.
In a similar vein, Mr Bardhan said that if the Soviet model was not
good, the IMF model was no better. He lamented the fact that today
a person was considered a reformer if he accepted the IMF model,
sought privatisation of PSUs and a reduction in the role of the
government. "Market does not bring an end to poverty. Market is the
place where profits are made," he said.
Both Mr Joshi and Mr Bardhan rejected the idea of giving statutory
status of chief secretaries and the cabinet secretary, mooted by
former CII president Subhodh Bhargava. Mr Bhargava's suggestion, if
accepted would create severe problems, said Mr Joshi, adding that
the civil executive had to be under the political executive. "Don't
give absolute power to any limb of state. There have to be checks
and balances," he added.
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