The editorial in the latest issue of Organiser, titled “The focus now is on education and road,” says: “It is good that Dr. Manmohan Singh has begun his second innings with a promise to focus on education and infrastructure. The ruling party has at last identified these as powerful engines of growth and promised increased public spending to propel investment in these areas. The PM has chosen two of his relatively brighter cabinet ministers to handle these areas¿ The HRD ministry under Arjun Singh had the most dubious distinction of a total absence of innovation. It did not bother to build additional infrastructure to cope with the growing demand for quality education. For instance, during the five years of NDA, there was a ten per cent increase in literacy level, 300 universities and thousands of colleges were networked with world’s best quality academic courseware, University of Roorkee was converted into an IIT, two new IIITs were founded, number of engineering colleges which was 562 in 1998 increased to 1203 in 2003”.

The editorial adds: “India had one of the most brilliant education ministers in Dr Murli Manohar Joshi under the NDA. It was he who identified and made the country aware of the great potential of education as a dynamo of growth. But the partisan politics in India understated his achievements by emphasising only on curriculum review, which in itself was innovative and an attempt to update and modernise textbooks.”

The editorial concludes: “During the NDA regime, in five years 25,000 kilometres of four and six-lane highways were built at a rate of 11 km per day. In the first fifty years of Independent India only 556 km of four and six-lane highways were built at a rate of 11 km per year. If we examine the UPA record in the last five years we see that the Manmohan government sincerely kept the pace of ‘Congress rate of road building’. The Golden Quadrilateral did not make any progress after the Vajpayee government left, completing 90 per cent of the work. Same is the fate of the North-South, East-West (NSEW) Corridor project launched by the NDA. Completion of Golden Quadrilateral alone will save Rs 8,000 crore annually in fuel costs. The ambitious NSEW project is late by four years because of similar reasons. This is the challenge before the new minister”

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