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New Delhi: India needs reforms in the national interest and "hard
decisions" will be pursued with people's support, despite
political opposition. This was the message a resolute Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh sent out Friday, barely hours after the
Trinamool Congress withdrew from his 40-month-old government
reducing it to a minority.
"No government wants to impose burdens on the common man,"
Manmohan Singh said, seeking to reach out directly to the people
and explaining to them the rationale behind "some important
economic policy decisions" taken in recent days, harsh as they may
seem.
"The time has come for hard decisions. For this I need your trust,
your understanding and your cooperation," he pleaded in a rare
televised address to the nation at prime time on public
broadcaster Doordarshan.
The address came shortly after all six Trinamool Congress
ministers - the second largest party in the UPA - resigned from
the government and withdrew the support of its 19 Lok Sabha
members to the ruling coalition, three days after it said it was
quitting the alliance over its latest round of reforms which it
said were "anti-poor".
Railway Minister Mukul Roy and five ministers of state called on
the prime minister and handed over their resignations. The meeting
barely lasted five minutes. They later went and submitted a letter
to President Pranab Mukherjee withdrawing support to the UPA.
These developments have a defnite impact on the life of the UPA-II,
which technically has 20 months more to go before the next
national elections.
But Manmohan Singh, aware of the political fallout of these
decisions, said he needed the support of every fellow citien to
put India "back on the path of high and inclusive growth."
"Please do not be misled by those who want to confuse you by
spreading fear and false information. The same tactics were
adopted in 1991. They did not succeed then. They will not succeed
now.
"I have full faith in the wisdom of the people of India," he said.
In a series of reformist decisions, that was reminiscent of the
liberalisation programme initiated by Manmohan Singh the finance
minister in 1991 when he opened up the economy, the government
last week allowed foreign equity in multi-brand retailing, further
eased the norms on single-brand retailing and the broadcast
sectors and permitted foreign airlines to pick stakes in domestic
carriers.
These decisions, which came just a day after a go-ahead to oil
marketing companies to raise prices of diesel and limit the
subsidy on cooking gas to six cylinders per year, did not go down
well with other parties, including a key ally, the Trinamool
Congress.
This led to opposition parties staging a nationwide protest
Thursday, with the leaders the of Left Front and the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) -- otherwise at opposite ends of the political
spectrum over their ideologies -- even sharing a common platform.
But the UPA, with strong backing from the Congress party
leadership, not just stuck to its guns but cocked a snook at the
opposition by notifying the reforms and making them operational.
With West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool
Congress, that has 19 members in the 545-seat Lok Sabha, keeping
her promise of walking out of the UPA, it was left with an
effective strength of 254 members, short of the mid-way mark of
273.
But it is counting on the support of Mulayam Singh Yadav's
Samajwadi Party with 22 members, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party
with 21 members and Lalu Prasad's Rashtriya Janata Dal with four.
Mulayam Singh Yadav told journalists that, though his party was
not in the UPA, they would support the government from outside "to
keep the BJP out of power." His party had however supported the
opposition-sponsored nationwide shutdown against the recent
measures.
With presumed support of both the main parties of Uttar Pradesh,
the UPA's numerical strength in the Lok Sabha should rise to 301,
not counting some of the nine independent members.
"We have the numbers. You will see," a confident Parliamentary
Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal said, even daring the
opposition to move a motion of no-confidence in the Lok Sabha to
test their strength.
If the stock markets are any indicator, the sensitive index (Sensex)
of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) shot by up over 400 points or
2.2 percent, with investors toasting the government's decision to
stay the course on reforms.
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