BJP puts off release of ‘India Vision 2025' document until after polls, fears its liberal stance on economic issues
By BHAVNA VIJ AURORA, ET Bureau | 27 Mar, 2014, 06.48AM IST
Post a Comment
BJP apparently fears its aggressively liberal stance on key economic issues could prove to be a distraction during the campaign.
ET SPECIAL:
Save precious time tracking your investments
NEW DELHI: Bharatiya Janata Party has quietly put off the release of its long-awaited medium-term
vision document until after the
Lok Sabha elections, apparently because of fears its aggressively liberal stance on key economic issues, notably on labour and
PSU reform, could trigger controversy and prove to be a distraction during the campaign.
The 'India Vision 2025' document has been ready for some weeks. The document openly backs industry's longstanding call for "retrenchment of labour to be made liberal" and unequivocally supports privatisation or even shutdown of loss-making PSUs along with vigorous disinvestment, ideas that will win support from industry but could be politically tricky.
BJP sources said the senior leaders took up the document during a meeting of the party's parliamentary board on March 13 and it was decided not to release it before the elections. Prepared by a team led by former BJP president Nitin Gadkari, it was conceived as one of a set of three documents that included the party's manifesto and its chargesheet against the UPA government.
India Vision 2025 was supposed to have been released in the first week of April soon after the release of the manifesto for 2014 elections on March 31. Gadkari confirmed to ET that it was ready, but said BJP's Parliamentary Board had "decided that the focus for now should be on elections".
BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said no date had been fixed for the release of the vision document. "The focus is on the chargesheet against UPA and the manifesto. Both the documents will be released after the ticket
distribution is complete. That should be by the month-end or early next month," she said. However, BJP sources said there were certain ideas in the document that had the potential to trigger controversy and senior leaders therefore decided the party's focus now should be on the task at hand and not on unnecessary fire-fighting. The document will first be discussed and debated within the party and then made public.
"Some of the things from the vision document have found their way into the manifesto," one source, a BJP leader, told ET. Other sources involved in making the manifesto confirmed that although there were areas of overlap in the vision documents and the manifesto, contentious issues have been kept out of the latter. Most of them pertain to the section on economy and agriculture of the vision document, they said.
Available with ET, the section talks about reforming labour laws, rationalising taxation laws and privatising loss-making PSUs. The document quotes senior leader LK Advani to outline the philosophy behind the economic vision — "Liberalisation means decontrol, deregulation and debureaucratisation". Conceived as the party's medium-term vision, the document calls for creating a framework of labour laws that "enable the hiring of labour during times of business expansion and downsize to manage business downturns".
While talking about providing "reasonable safeguards to labourers and entrepreneurs", it calls for "retrenchment of labour to be made liberal". It also speaks about the need to redraft labour laws to make them simpler and less bureaucratic. While these will be music to the ears of industry and investors, many of whom have expressed frustration with India's rigid labour laws and spoken of it as a serious impediment to investment, the ideas will not find favour with labour unions and BJP's political rivals.
The document also talks about changing the way public sector undertakings are run and favours a hands-off approach. It has recommended minimising the role of government in commercially viable competitive businesses so as to provide a level playing field for the private sector. The BJP also favours more functional autonomy to strategically important PSUs and privatisation or shutting down loss-making state firms to avoid vitiating the level playing field for industry.
"The overarching philosophy shall be that the role of the government is only to provide a con-ducive atmosphere for healthy and competitive businesses to thrive rather than participating as a market participant," says the document adding that the aim should be to minimise government presence in industry except in strategic sectors and unlock value through disinvestment. The Vision 2025 document also calls for rationalising of tax laws to encourage investments in the production and services sector. "India has to comprehensively reform the tax administration and bring in a low, stable and a straightforward taxation regime," it states.
The BJP wants a similar handsoff approach in agriculture sector too where it wants to reduce and eventually eliminate government role in determination of agricultural prices and control over agricultural transactions while strengthening markets with appropriate regulatory mechanisms. Gadkari had promised the Vision 2025 when he was party presi dent, and had started working on it with a team of dedicated people including Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, director of Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini, a RSS backed thinktank.
The project got a fillip when a separate sub-committee was made in June 2013 to work on it as part of election campaign. Gadkari was made chairman and its members included Sahasrabuddhe and BJP leaders Prof Hari Babu and OP Kohli. The committee interacted with professionals drawn from various fields.
It got feedback from policy experts such as Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Bibek Debroy and Arvind Panagariya. The members held meetings with CEOs of the country's top IT companies and industry chambers that saw 34 industry captains with turnover of over Rs 5,000 crore giving their views. Participants at those meetings included business figures such as Naina Lal Kidwai, Som Mittal, Deepak Ghaisas, Ajay Singha and Pankaj Mohindroo.
if even 50% of this happen ,we will be sailing in high growth numbers
......... which makes me ask you the question, Are you a KAPU ? (same caste as Chiranjeevi ) 
