Discussion on the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address to both Houses of Parliament assembled together on 12.03.2012 moved by Dr. Girija Vyas and seconded by Dr. Shashi Tharoor.
MADAM SPEAKER: Hon. Members, before we take up the next item of business, that is Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address, I have an announcement to make.
You are aware that as per the established procedure, amendments to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s Address are moved after the Seconder to the motion has concluded his speech. In this regard an announcement requesting the Members to hand over at the Table slips indicating the serial numbers of the amendments to be moved by Members is made immediately after the speech of the Seconder.
It was brought to my notice that approximately 2000 amendments were tabled by 1515 hours on 12thMarch, 2012. Hon. Members would appreciate that it was not possible to process such a large number of amendments, get them printed and circulated to the Members by today morning. I, therefore, discussed this issue with the Members of the Business Advisory Committee at their meeting held yesterday. It was decided in the BAC that notices of all amendments which would be tabled by 11 a.m. today would be considered.
I may inform the House that 2667 amendments in all have been received till 11 a.m. today. All these amendments are being processed, and will be printed and circulated to the Members in due course. Members whose amendments are admitted and circulated would be permitted to move them on 14th March, 2012 when further discussion on the Motion of Thanks will be resumed.
- SHASHI THAROOR (THIRUVANANTHAPURAM): Mr. Deputy-Speaker, Sir, I rise to second the Motion moved by my friend, and hon. colleague, Dr. Girija Vyas that the Address be presented to the President in the following terms - that the Members of the Lok Sabha assembled in the Session are deeply grateful to the President for the Address which she has been pleased to deliver to both Houses of Parliament assembled together on March 12, 2012.
Mr. Deputy Speaker, Sir, this month, in fact, by the end of this month, India will be determined to be, by the International Monetary Fund, the third largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity terms. This is because though our economy, in absolute terms, is indeed 1.3 trillion dollars by comparison with Japan’s figure of 4.3. Our economy, in terms of the strength of what we are able to buy with our money, has grown to the equivalent of 4.06 trillion dollars. And whereas Japan will not grow in this fiscal year thanks sadly to the tsunami, earthquake and the after effects of the nuclear disaster and so on, our economy, even in the most pessimistic projections, will grow at 6.9 per cent which means that India will formally overtake Japan when the numbers are in on the 31st of March this year. Now this is a major accomplishment for our Government and for our economy. But it is not a ground for complacency. Rather, it points to the serious and responsible stewardship of the country’s economy in the hands of the UPA Government.
Sir, as you know, we are about to launch into the 12th Five Year Plan. We are already projecting an estimated growth rate of 9 per cent in that Five Year Plan starting on the 1st of April. It so happens that in the course of the current Five Year Plan we will, in fact, be averaging something like 8.2 per cent when the numbers are finally in. So, we are looking at a track record that we can be proud of as a Government and as a nation and we intend to be able to continue in that direction.
But whether we are growing at 9 per cent or whether we are growing at 6 per cent or any other per cent, our real focus must be on the bottom 25 per cent of our society and that is where the strength of the UPA Government lies. We are interested in inclusive growth. You have heard this already being mentioned by my hon. colleague. The difference between the UPA Government and some of its distinguished predecessors is that while it believes in growth, it believes in an India that must shine for everyone and an India in which growth is accompanied by redistributive justice.
Sir, one example which the President herself highlighted in her Address was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. As she mentioned, this has created 1,100 crore man days of employment. The expression ‘man days’ is a bit old fashioned. But I can tell you from my visits to many of these projects in my home district that many of the workers are women and they are women whose lives have been transformed by the existence of this scheme introduced by the UPA Government. I have spoken to many of these women workers. I can tell you moving stories of, for example, one woman who said that without this opportunity to work for 100 days even at a minimum wage, she would have had to give up her handicapped child for adoption to an orphanage and she said, ‘what has enabled me to look after this child in my own home is the fact that this Government has given me the means to be able to earn a decent livelihood to support my child’.
These are the kinds of stories one hears day after day if one talks to the men and women who are benefiting from the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and what is more, as you know, this has transformed the countryside. We are now seeing bank accounts being opened because the Government rightly insists that the wages for this scheme should be paid directly into the bank accounts of the workers and not through a middle man or a contractor. The result is that 90 lakh new bank accounts have been opened in this country in the last two years for people who, previously, did not know the advantages of banking in our rural areas.
These are the kinds of transformations that are taking place because the basic idea is not just to hand out money. The idea is to empower our people. By giving them, in their own hands, the right to work, the right to gain from their work, the right to support and look after their own families, the UPA Government has been able to bring about a transformation in the lives of ordinary people in our country.
Day after day, these are the stories we are hearing, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. This is what inclusive growth is all about: the empowerment of the poor, giving them the purchasing power that has transformed in many ways our rural economy, and taking the country forward in a way that no longer leaves behind so many of our underprivileged rural residents.
The same logic lies behind the telecom revolution that the President mentioned. There is also a logic of empowerment. Yes, the numbers speak for themselves. We are already the world’s second largest telecommunications market. We have overtaken the United States. Today, as the President mentioned, 76 telephone connections exist per 100 people. Just 30 years ago, before Shri Rajiv Gandhi first initiated the communication revolution in our country, we had one telephone connection for every 300 Indians. And, from there, we have gone today to 76 for every 100 Indians. These are the kinds of changes we have brought about. But, second largest is not even going to be enough. This year, it is estimated, we will overtake China to become the largest telephone communications market in the world. But, as I said, it is about empowerment; it is not about numbers alone.
Who is carrying these mobile telephones? Let me tell you, from my own Constituency, I know fishermen are taking mobile phones out to sea. And what are they doing? The Government gives them, through the GPS system, a way of finding out where the best shoals of fish lie. So, they can catch them. And then, when they come back, they start dialling on their mobile phones all the market towns along the coast to find out where they can get the best price for the fish they have caught. Why only speak of Kerala? Farmers anywhere in India; just 10 years ago, you would find that the farmer at harvest time would have to harvest his crop, then send an able-bodied male relative, maybe a 10 year old boy, walking 10-12 kilometres to the nearest market to find out if the market was open, whether he could sell the crop he had just harvested, what price he could sell it for, what the competition was. Then that little boy would walk back again 10-12 kilometres in the hot sun and would come back to the farmer. Then they will load their carts and head off to market. Half a day’s back breaking labour, that is today saved by one-two minute phone call. That is what the revolution has been that has been brought about in this country by the UPA Government.
We are talking about the empowerment of the underclass. This is the real meaning, the real content of the concepts of socialism that have been bandied about for so many years in this House. We have begun to bring about real change. That change is in the lives of ordinary people in our country. This is why the President mentioned that the Government is now going to create a national optical fibre network spending Rs.20,000 crore. It is again about empowerment. It is about bringing broadband connectivity to our villages, to our panchayats. Because today it is not enough for us to give lectures about the poverty line. We also have to understand the fibre optic line. The truth is that today’s information revolution which our Government has seized upon is very unlike the French Revolution because it has a lot of liberty, some fraternity and no equality. We want to bring equality to our rural areas. We want to connect the unconnected. And that is an activity of this Government that I know the President highlighted because she wants this House to support it strongly. This is all part of building up the unseen infrastructure of India, the rural infrastructure of our country. If you can connect every panchayat by road, which we have not yet been able to do, but we are doing to the best of our ability through a number of very important schemes including one from the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana; if in addition to connecting every panchayat by road, by good, all-weather motorable roads, we can also bring in connectivity by broadband, we will be able to find our villages prospering because jobs that today can only be done in the cities, because they have the internet connections, will now be able to be done in the villages. You can actually sit and run a call centre in a village if you have enough fibre optic cable and enough broadband connectivity.
Similarly with health, you may have noticed that the President mentioned that we will try and increase our health expenditure to 2.5 per cent of our GDP. That would be a very significant development because it will then finally ensure an objective of the UPA Government, in its two terms, that nobody should have to walk more than 10 kilometres from their place of residence to get to a health centre that is fully staffed, that has all the medicines, that has doctors and nurses to look after people. We are getting there. We have made progress and with the increase in outlay, we will make further progress.
Similarly, the hon. President highlighted that 15 per cent of outlays of certain identified Government schemes would be spent on specifically disadvantaged sections of our minority communities. Mahatama Gandhiji had always exhorted us to look at the most vulnerable sections of our society, to see whether our programmes were having any impact on their lives.
Today, Mr. Deputy Speaker, with this, we are going to be in a position to ensure that the most disadvantaged of the disadvantaged the poorest, the most vulnerable amongst the minorities, are themselves targeted beneficiaries of Government action. This attempt to reach out to the most vulnerable is the key to inclusive growth, because empowerment does not come from empowering only those who are already in a position to seize power. It comes from empowering those at the bottom of our socio-economic ladder and there the national Food Security Bill, which we are looking forward to receiving in this House and which the hon. President also mentioned, is going to bring forward an important assurance to every Indian that he or she will never need to go hungry. With the computerisation of the public distribution system we can also ensure those who need subsidised food grain will get it. With all this you will see true empowerment, because a hungry person is going to find it very difficult to be an empowered person. A hungry person cannot take advantage of what our country has to offer as it marches on in development and this hungry person will benefit today from the efforts and the programmes of our UPA Government.
The needs of our national infrastructure, of course, go beyond the rural areas. There is no question that our coming Five Year Plan, the Twelfth Five Year Plan, anticipates that we will spend about a trillion dollars that is Rs. 50 lakh crores of rupees in building up our infrastructure. This is an extraordinarily large target. The Government is very conscious that it cannot raise all this money by itself. So, the opening to ‘public-private partnership’ is a part of this approach. If we have the credibility by doing the kind of things that I have described to you today then outside investors will also come and will also join us as we build our nation.
Eighty per cent of the infrastructure of the India of 2030 is yet to be built and we must think 20 years ahead. If we want to envisage the kind of India that our children should live in 2030, we have to start building it today. There is a famous story about the emperor Jahangir and a gardener where he asked the gardener to plant a particular plant, which was going to give a very beautiful flower in blossom. The gardener said: ‘Jahanpanah, this plant would only blossom in hundred years’. Emperor Jahangir said: ‘All the more reason why you should plant it today, let us not wait till tomorrow’. That is our approach in this Government.
We want to see the India of 2030 not just on the paper, not just as a dream, but beginning on the ground today.
The fact is that these opportunities to help build the infrastructure of India are opportunities that we want the private sector to seize both in India and abroad and for that I would urge this House to send a strong signal to the world that India is ready for investment. Under the stewardship of the UPA Government we have done the basics, we have done what is necessary and we are in a position to open up in order to attract investment and grow our country, build the structures on which our children’s future will then be built.
Energy is another area flagged by the hon. President. We actually need to increase by a multiple of seven times in the next 25 years. From 2009, when we came back to power to 2034 in 25 years, we expect to see a seven times multiple increase in power generation. The resources for that again cannot only come from the Government. It has to be a partnership with the private sector; with investors from inside and outside.
We in turn are able to hold our own with the world. As the hon. President pointed out, our exports grew at 34 per cent last year in 2011, that means we are able to make goods that the rest of the world wants and needs to buy. We are, therefore, dealing with the rest of the world on our own terms just as we seek their involvement in our growth and development on our terms.
The fact is that the hon. President announced yesterday a new National Manufacturing Policy. Manufacturing is important. We need to employ our young people. Let us face it. For some time now we have been speaking of a possible demographic dividend, a great demographic advantage for our country. That is, 65 per cent of our population is under 35, which means that for the next 30 years we should have a youthful, dynamic, productive workforce when the rest of the world including China, is ageing. But that workforce will only materialise and be successful and even only be possible if we are able to educate these young people before they enter the workforce. Not everyone is going to come out of a college, we need to find vocational training skills for those who are not going to get a conventional college education, but we should do that. It seems to me a disgrace that as a result of past policies which we are changing in this Government, that we have a situation wherein a country of 1.2 billion people we have a nationwide shortage of masons; that you only become a plumber or a carpenter if your father was a plumber or a carpenter and he taught you the skills. We do not have the skills imparted through official effective vocational training establishments, and the UPA Government is committed to setting those up so that we can make sure that our young people are equipped to take advantage of the opportunities of the new economy that we in India are building in the early 21st Century. The truth is that the alternative is too awful to contemplate if we do not get this right. If this House does not support the Government in introducing the educational reforms that it has presented to the House, the vocational training plans it is presenting to the House, the alternative is going to be that instead of a demographic dividend, we will have a demographic disaster. Because if these young people do not have the training and the education to take work, they will do what Maoists have done in 165 districts of our country’s 602 districts. They will pick up the gun. Because they will feel that they have no stake in the future of our society and they have nothing to lose if they are simply going to rebel in this fashion. And, I can tell you from having lived around the world, there is nothing more dangerous to any country in the world than large numbers of unemployed young men. The policies of this Government are absolutely aiming to ensure that our young men will find employment; they will be educated and trained to be skilled to find their employment and that we will grow our economy in a way that makes it possible for them to find meaningful work. That is why the National Manufacturing Policy was mentioned. And that is why we are trying to move forward across the board in so many areas of effective action so that our young people will have the stake in our economy that is going to give them and India the future we all deserve.
We are also, of course, going beyond manufacturing and the kind of vocational training I have mentioned to something also more aspiration at the development of India as a knowledge economy.
The President mentioned, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that we would increase the amount of money that our Government is devoting to Research and Development from one per cent to two per cent of our GDP. That is no small matter. There are a very few countries in the world that are spending two per cent of their GDP. But I remember when our hon. Prime Minister made that announcement at the Indian Science Congress it was an extraordinarily important decision because it shows that we are going to take advantage of what is perhaps the India’s biggest asset, and that is, our brains. We are a land perhaps of greater brain than brawn but our brains can be applied effectively to the creation of a 21st Century knowledge economy.
Already multinational giants like GE or Phillips employ more researchers in India than they do in their parent country headquarters. This is also a reflection of the environment that has been created by the UPA Government. The high quality intellectual output that we are able to give through the kind of work we do in Research actually augurs extremely well for our country. Innovation is becoming the major theme now coming out of India and it is innovation at a sensible cost. In fact, if you were to google the expression ‘frugal innovation’, you will find that the first 20 answers all relate to India because we have found a way of innovating inexpensively, of cutting out the frills because our country cannot afford them. And that is why, we have become the country that has invented the world’s cheapest electrocardiogram machine, for example, at one-twentieth cost of foreign countries; the country which has after all produced the world’s cheapest automobile, Tata Nano. Our Human Resource Development Minister has very recently introduced a Tablet, the Akash Tablet, which, in many ways, is like the iPad and the iPad, which all of you know costs Rs.40,000 or Rs,50,000 in the market but in some ways it is better than the iPad because it has two USB ports. It needs only a two volt battery, ion and lithium battery, which can be charged using solar power because we want this tablet to be used in places where electricity supply may not be regular. This innovation has come out of India at what price? It is less at less than 50 dollars. In fact, the Government is going to subsidize it for students; and an Indian student in a village will be able to get this tablet for 25 dollars. So, a thousand rupees and change, will give an ordinary poor Indian village student, a piece of equipment comparable in every useful respect to the luxurious I-Pad.
This is the kind of change that is happening! I was not surprised, therefore, when I was invited by the University of Toronto to inaugurate an India Innovation Centre. The outside world is noticing our innovations. The buzzword now in the international community is ‘Indovation’, Indian Innovation. All this has been made possible because of the enabling environment created by the UPA Government; and it is something, which I believe, we should applaud in this House.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker, there is also India’s great strength in providing services, services to the rest of the world, especially during the recession. My hon. colleague Dr. Girija Vyas also mentioned how we have resisted the recession. The fact is that while our merchandise export did go down during the recession, our services export actually went up; and they went up during the global recession because of the strength we have given to the business of services in India. There are Indian Radiologists reading MRIs from the most prestigious American hospitals. We have medical transcription services so that a doctor in the western world can dictate medical notes at night into a machine. They will arrive when he goes to sleep; they are transcribed in India while we are awake. They get back to him in the next morning. That is kind of service that India is able to provide that no one else can. We have young Indian lawyers writing briefs now for international cases. These are changes that this House is perhaps not sufficiently conscious of. But it is part of the services revolution that India is leading in the world today.
Coming to Hospitality, the President mentioned tourism as an important area. People must recognise that tourism actually creates more jobs than industry does; and it creates jobs often for relatively unskilled or semi-skilled young people, who do not have perhaps the education to do other things but who can work in hotels, who can be waiters, who can assist cooks and who can learn on the job. Tourism, for us, therefore, is something that is a development priority. It is not just something for the comfort and convenience of foreigners in 5-Star Hotels. If we promote tourism, we help poor Indians; and this is something this Government is committed to doing. The President mentioned 12 per cent growth target in tourism in the next five years, and I assure you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that this is one more indication of the Government’s consciousness of how to move forward in meeting the demands and needs of the 21stCentury.
Sir, Foreign Direct Investment has been mentioned. We do know that there was a proposal made by the Government, which for the moment has been suspended. But the truth is that in the global climate today, Foreign Direct Investment overall has been down in our country. We have received only 19 billion dollars in the last fiscal year. But let me tell you the other side of that story. The remittances we have been getting from our own Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) have gone up every single year of the global recession. When the world started a recession in 2008-2009, our NRIs, our diaspora, sent home 46.4 billion dollars. In the next year, they sent home 55.75 billion dollars. In the third year, that is, last year, they sent home 57.6 billion dollars. So, Indians abroad believe in India; they believe in the work of the UPA Government; they have faith that their money will be put to good use in this country; and that is the message I would like this House to send to the world. If our own diaspora who perhaps believe in our country; if they -- very often, hardworking blue collar workers from places like my District working in countries in the Gulf -- can send money back to India, certainly this House ought to show greater confidence in the economic management of the UPA Government and send a signal to the rest of the world: “Come and invest in us. We are doing well with your money.” But I also want to pay a brief tribute to these NRIs. Years ago in a book that I wrote, I asked a question: “Should NRI stand for ‘Not Really Indian’, or ‘Never Relinquished India’ because there is a little bit of both in our NRIs. They have left our country but they have not given up on us. In many ways, people have not relinquished India. Today, we can add, having seen these numbers of NRI remittances, they are also the ‘Now Required Indians’, the NRIs of our country. We require them.
SHRI HARIN PATHAK (AHMEDABAD EAST): Please advise the Finance Minister to give them relief.
- SHASHI THAROOR :Since I am no longer an NRI, I can speak of them objectively with a great deal of admiration for their dedication and their patriotism to our country.
My hon. colleague also mentioned the strength of our democracy which I am proud to say our Government has safeguarded with a tremendous amount of conviction. The pluralism of India is something the UPA stands for. We do not accept narrower definitions of Indian-ness, bigoted definitions of what makes India what it is. We are a land, we believe in the UPA, that is the land of everyone whosoever has contributed to our civilization, a land of people who have over millennia helped build India into the India we have today. This role of our UPA Government in sustaining through conscious Governmental policy, the diversity of our country, rests on a profound understanding that India is a land that experiences divisions but can overcome these divisions, divisions of caste, of creed, of colour, of culture, of consonant, of conviction, of costume and custom because we can still rally around a consensus, and that consensus, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, is on a very simple principle, that in a rich and diverse democracy like us, you do not really need to agree all the time so long as you can agree on the ground rules of how you will disagree.
We have seen political disagreements in our country. We have seen them being resolved with the ballot box and we, in the UPA, have taken victory and defeat in stride because we accept that this is how democracy works. In the same spirit we should say to our friends on the other side that democracy is also about respectfully listening to arguments and making counter arguments, not about disrupting the work of this august House. Let us join hands together to make this House an effective instrument of our people. Let us make it together a House where we will actually discuss policies, including in the remarks that will follow in response to the Motion that has been moved. Let us in a constructive way look at how India can move forward because at the end of the day every Member of this House surely shares the same objective, an India that is an India we all wish to be proud of.
It is sad to see political divisions on the issue of terrorism. Our hon. Home Minister made the point today that terrorism is an issue that transcends quarrels between the Central Government and the State Governments. We do need to overcome these problems and I do not want to pre-judge the outcome of the consultations which, the Minister said, will take place with all the State Governments. But I do want to highlight one point that the President herself made which is that 18 terrorist modules had actually been dismantled by the UPA Government in 2011.
We always focus on the bad news. Whenever there is a bomb that goes off in a Mumbai bazaar, we will, of course, absolutely focus all our attention, our headlines, our televisions news on what happened. But we pay no attention at all to the terrorist bombings that did not happen because of our effective work. The dog that did not bark never makes the news but the fact is if the President of India can stand before the two Houses and tell you that 18 terrorist modules have been neutralized in 2011, that does go to the credit of the Government, and I appeal to this House to give credit where the credit is due.
I am conscious of the time, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I would like briefly to turn to the foreign policy as well since the President touched upon it. The effective stewardship of our nation’s external interest in the hands of the UPA Government led by our hon. Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh has been widely applauded around the world. We have had, of course, to spend a fair amount of time on our immediate neighbourhood. We live, as the expression goes, in a tough neighbourhood. We had some serious challenges coming from across the borders of our country and it is extremely important that as the Prime Minister has done that we devote the kind of time necessary to ensuring that the tranquility and peace of our neighbourhood is not disturbed and does not spill over into our country.
But in addition to that we have been serving for the last year-and-a-half in the United Nations Security Council as a Non-Permanent Member. We have been able to use that experience to demonstrate to the world how a responsible, emerging power has emerged on to the global stage. Today, we can proudly say that India is looked upon with respect in all the chancelleries of the world’s capitals and the respect particularly felt for our hon. Prime Minister is one that has been widely acknowledged.
The Time Magazine poll on Global Leaders has said that the most single respected global leader in the world is India’s Prime Minister. When President Obama of the United States was asked to name the global leaders in the world he respected, the first name he mentioned was again our Prime Minister of India. These are all matters that go beyond political parties; these are matters that all Indians should be proud of because our Prime Minister is your Prime Minister on the other side of the House as well as ours. But, let us also stress that it is not merely respect we are seeking, we in this UPA Government are determined to safeguard the national interest of India effectively and of Indian people wherever they may be found. Which is why, as the President mentioned, we had during the Civil War in Libya, during the outbreak that jeopardised the lives of 16,000 Indians there, we were able to effectively conduct Operation Safe Homecoming, that brought home 16,000 of our fellow citizens safe from disaster. This is the kind of tangible focus on Indian interests that you are seeing day after day and week after week from the UPA Government.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker, it is fitting that I conclude. We have to acknowledge that there are still huge problems that we need to overcome. This Government has never pretended that everything is perfect. We know there are challenges. The Prime Minister quite recently in releasing a Report on Child Malnutrition even said, ‘there are matters of which we should be ashamed and Child Malnutrition is one such matter’.
In our country, we cannot hide our heads in the sand. There are very serious problems of poverty that we need to overcome in our country. I earned some unfair notoriety a couple of years ago when some gentlemen from the other side of the House spoke of India being a super power and I said, we cannot speak of being a super power, when we are still super poor. This is not a popular thing to say but it is true. We do have a large number of our people in whose service the UPA Government is working; the people, we are determined to pull out of poverty. We have been doing it every year. Every year of this Government’s existence, we have pulled out approximately one per cent of our population from below the poverty line. Last year, it was 0.78 per cent. But, if we look at the Planning Commission figures, we are thinking about 10 million people a year who have been no longer under the poverty line under our Government. This is a bit slow. There is lot more that needs to be done. But, we are not China. China has grown at great-neck speed. If you grow at great-neck speed, you also break a few necks. We do not do that in India. We bring our people along with us in the process of growth and development.
I want to stress that the UPA Government is working – if I can use computer language – on both the hardware of development and on the software of development. The hardware – the roads, the airports, the railways, the infrastructural questions have not been neglected, as you note from the President’s speech, but also the software of development – the human capital on which our nation rests, the human capital of our ordinary people, the Indian men and women in the poorest parts of this country. The objective of our Government is and must remain to ensure that they get three square meals a day; that they are able to send their children to a good school, a good Government school that teachers actually come to and teach; that they are able themselves to aspire to decent jobs – decent jobs that we train and equip them for and that we try and create in our economy so that they and their children can look to a better future. That is the purpose of Government. We must be conscious that we are building this country amongst our very very youthful population – I mentioned the number earlier as 65 per cent are below 35 years. But I can tell you that our Prime Minister when he addressed the newly elected Congress Members of Parliament, just two and half years ago, in the Central Hall, said, ‘never forget that we got a lot of support of young voters in this election’ and he said, ‘we must never stop respecting the impatience of the young’. That is what the UPA Government is conscious of – the impatience of the young. Our young have a right to be impatient. They have a right to want change. They have a right to want to see progress and it is our job to provide that.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker, we in the UPA have a sweeping vision for the future of this country and we are on course to bring about these changes. This is a vision which we have not heard from the other side of the House and I am not sure we will hear in the debates this afternoon. It is because it is a vision that sees a great adventure in this nation of bringing 1.2 billion people out into the forefront of the world of 21stCentury, of doing so by bringing 600 million poor Indians bringing them into the 21st Century, connecting 600 million Indian villagers into the global village.
These are major challenges, but these are worthwhile ambitions and worthwhile aspirations for a country like ours. We in the UPA are doing this in an open society, in a democratic society where our policies will be challenged at the ballot box and also in the streets. We are trying to do this at the helm of a rich, diverse and plural civilization; but one, in our view, should be open to the contention of ideas and interests within it that should not be afraid of the prowess or the products of the outside world; that should be determined to liberate and fulfil the creative energies of the Indian people.
Such an India is the India that the President spoke of in her Address yesterday. It is an India that has grown and will grow. It is an India that stands ready to assume its global responsibilities in the 21st century. I call upon the House to vote for this Motion.
Thank you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker.
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