Speeches (Vol. IV)

Anyway, you are having deficit financing. At least by doing some justice to some people, you have deficit financing. This all I can say. It is a very difficult problem. I know it is a very difficult problem. We are facing many contradictions in our socio-economic conditions. What is our basic purpose today? What is our basic direction? When I say direction, I mean our priorities. Our direction must be the transformation of the socio-economic conditions in our country. Whatever you do ultimately you will have to see whether you are doing it rightly or wrongly. The major areas of production are fertilizer, power generation, railways, coal, agriculture etc. These are some of the major areas of production.

I know you have appointed a sub-committee. That is all right. But we do not know what the sub-committee is doing. What we want is not committees and sub-committees. What we want, and what the nation wants, are results. We do not see the results. We want to know whether there are results; you had said or you had promised the country that by expanding supplies you would control the inflation. You could have certainly done that. But there is no increase in the supplies. This is the tragedy of this country, and I would like to request  beca use our criticism should be taken in a constructive spirit, we do not want to criticise you, for the sake of criticising. Mr. Sukhadia said that the opposition wants chaos. I can assure him, - we are old friends - we don’t think in terms of chaos. We don’t want chaos. We are not organising chaos. What we want is orderly progress of this country. What we want is consolidation and unity of this country. For that matter we have always offered our cooperation and we are always willing to offer our co-operation for that. But you have got your own fads and attitudes about the country and you say that the opposition is not co-operating. Unfortunately you are not co-operating with yourself. What can we do about it? That is the basic difficulty. Therefore, I would suggest, locate the basic and priority areas of production. Please find out more important sections of society which are necessary for production and what incentive you want to give to them. If necessary, think about a subsidy. Ultimately you have to find out the prices of the essential items, particularly for the poor man who is below the poverty line, what he needs, at least identify 10-12 items for them. Don’t tell them excuses about cost of production and, therefore, you will have to pay more. Think about some sort of political remedy for it. Think of some subsidy for it. At least to the people below the poverty line, you supply 10, 12 or 15 essential items. You have got the machinery for distribution. For more than two decades, we have got a distribution system. Improve upon it. Increase it. Make it effective and try to ease the burden on the shoulders of the poor people. This is the plea I want to make.