The rehabilitation policy and the Bill to amend the Land Acquisition Act is already pending in Parliament. “I would like that this is not an issue which should create friction and division among parties, because India must industrialise to realise its destiny,” the Prime Minister said, adding farmers should be given remunerative compensation wherever land is acquired.

At the last leg of his present tenure, Singh defended the administered pricing mechanism for fuel products and the below-the-line accounting for oil bonds. “The situation has been such that oil prices shot up in a manner that if I had passed on the whole burden to the people at large, there would have been reckless inflation. That would have been far more counter productive,” he said.

Singh, who championed reforms in 1991 as the Finance Minister in PV Narasimha Rao’s government, said, reforms cannot take place in a political vacuum. “We would have liked to do a lot more. But I think politics is the art of possible,” he added.

‘I hope we can find ways to work with Left’

Replying to questions, the PM said:

• Elections will be held on schedule.

• I beg to differ (with the Left) — strengthening India’s banking, insurance systems enabled us to deal with the crisis more effectively. But I am not very happy to part company with our Left colleagues. In my view, India is faced with difficult problems. All parties committed to secularism and nationalism must work together to deal with communal and regional divide sought to be created by some anti-social elements. I very much hope we can find ways and means to work with our Left colleagues.

... contd.