Economic agenda must be depoliticised -- PM

Economic agenda must be depoliticised -- PM
HARISH GUPTA

July 17: Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has initiated a multi-pronged strategy to ``sustain'' a geniune national consensus on economic reforms. His call today to the members of the Economic Advisory Council that ``economic agenda must be de-politicised'' was obviously aimed at telling the RSS and the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch leaders that they should help in the process.

Since the Congress is supporting the reform process despite constituting an economic review panel and the Left parties are virtually silent, the PM's call today and a number of events that are taking place on the economic front indicate that he is aiming to placate these voices of dissent. But without compromising.

If he fielded Union Home Minister L K Advani among other ministers to molify the RSS and SJM who bitterly attacked his government's economic policies persued, he okayed an open debate on disinvestment tomorrow to his Man Friday on Disinvestment Arun Jaitley.

Jaitley will respond to the fears of the RSS and SJM at the FICCI auditorium on disinvestment. And his fellow-speaker will be Madan Dass Devi, joint general secretary of the RSS handling political affairs in the organisation. Devi succeeded K S Sudarshan. This is the first time that the government and the RSS will be face to face on disinvestment.

Since disinvestment of PSUs and participation of foreigners in the process dominated today's proceedings between the government and the SJM, BJP, RSS interaction for five hours today, its public face would be known tomorrow when the function takes place.

As far as the government is concerned, it sent a high-powered delegation to assauge the hurt SJM leaders. Apart from Advani, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, Arun Jaitley, Arun Shourie and Sumitra Mahajan represented the government.

The first interaction is the basis of such a dialogue in future too. But the government is unwilling to reverse or slow down the process. This indication came today when the Commerce Ministry issued a notification confirming participation of Foreign Direct Investment in the e-commerce business (B2B) with a rider that if these are multi-national companies, they would have to seek an Indian partner with 26 per cent equity.

The SJM had opposed the entry of MNCs in the B2B. However, the government clarified that it had not taken any decision on permitting them in the retail trade.