Salient Points of Shri L.K. Advaniji's speech in Parliament
in the debate on the Motion of Thanks to President

Mr. Speaker Sir,

I rise to support the Motion of Thanks to Mahamahim Rashtrapatiiji for her Address to Parliament on the opening day of the Budget Session.

Insofar as the Address is an account of the Government’s performance, it hides more than it reveals. For disclosing the truth would certainly be detrimental to the health of this government, which, as everybody in this House and in the country at large knows, is not very robust.

And I say this in spite of the self-congratulatory mood that the Congress party seems to be in, following the presentation of the Budget.

Price Rise

Today, as far as the aam aadmi and aam aurat are concerned, the biggest source of their pain and suffering is skyrocketing prices.

Foodgrains have become costlier, milk has become costlier, sugar has become costlier, transportation has become costlier, and the cost of healthcare and children’s education has become almost unbearable.

How has the UPA government addressed this problem?

Paragraph 4 says? “It will continue to be the endeavour of my Government to sustain growth while keeping prices under check. My Government has endeavoured to insulate the Indian consumer from global inflationary trends.”

Mr. Speaker Sir, the formulation of these sentences made me wonder whether the UPA government is in the first year of its tenure or the last. We are told that the Government will endeavour, will continue to endeavour, has endeavoured and so on …But the moot question is: What has been the outcome of the government’s endeavour as far as the aam aadmi is concerned?

After being in power for nearly four years, the government ought to have said, with confidence, “Yes, we endeavoured, we strove hard, and we have succeeded keeping the prices of essential commodities under check.”

Mr. Prime Minister, can you make this claim?

If you cannot make this claim even in your government’s fourth and penultimate year, and if you try to take cover behind obfuscatory claims, then all I can say is that you have indicted yourself.

You have yourself indirectly conceded your betrayal of the aam aadmi.

Therefore, a government that has betrayed the aam aadmi in whose name you sought votes in 2004, does not deserve to continue in office.

9% growth. But where is Inclusive Growth?

The government takes credit for India’s 9% GDP growth. Now I am not like my predecessor in this House who, in 2004, standing at this very spot, had sneered at India’s 8% GDP growth rate as “Mungeri Lal ke haseen sapne”.

My predecessor and her partymen think that India has progressed — and can progress — only because of Congress governments, and, further, that non-Congress governments can only ruin India.

I am afraid, no doctor has an ilaaz (treatment) for this jaundiced view. Democracy alone has the medicine. The Congress party’s domination is long gone. Tell me how many governments you have in states?

The people of India have been administering this medicine, but the jaundice of arrogance, of sneering at the opposition, has not gone.
Perhaps a stronger dose of medicine is required. The people will surely administer it.

As far as my party and I are concerned, we take pride in the fact that India’s GDP has been growing at 9%. I would be happier if it became 10% and more. Double-digit growth is not only possible but I am confident that India will achieve it soon.

But I am on the point of the government’s claims about having a “strategy of inclusive growth”. Strategy? Where is the strategy? What has it achieved? Can the PM or the FM claim that India’s 9% growth has been “inclusive” in the past four years?

The fact of the matter is: There are small parts of India, both geographical and social, that are growing at double-digit rates. However, a majority of India — again I mean, a majority of India’s geographical and social space — is growing at a very low rate.

My friend M.J. Akbar has described it vividly: The kind of unequal economic growth that we are witnessing in India shows that, there has been a “waterfall” for a small minority whereas there aren’t even a few drops of water for the thirsty majority.

In recent months, newspapers have been full of stories how a few Indians have found a place in the elite club of the richest in the world. Their personal and family wealth runs into billions of dollars.

I recently came across a shocking piece of information in the newspapers. “Twenty richest Indians earn more than 30 crore poorest Indians.”

I repeat: “Twenty richest Indians earn more than 30 crore poorest Indians.”

Who said this?

This information comes from none other than the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Shri Bimal Jalan, who is an honourable member of the other House.

1963: LOHIA and the Teen Anna banaam Pandrah Anna debate
2008: “Bees Kuber banaam Tees Karod Gareeb” debate

I recall an interesting that took place in the Lok Sabha in 1963. The country had a one-party government through three general elections. Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia wrote a pamphlet pointing out growing economic inequality in the country under successive Congress regime. “A vast majority of our people live on 3 annas a day. Nehru refuted this, saying that the Planning Commission statistics showed that the daily average income was more like 15 annas per day. Lohia demanded that this was an important issue, one that cried out for a special debate. The debate did take place and came to be known as the " Teen Anna Pandrah Anna" debate. Member after member gave up his time to Lohia as he built his case, demolishing the Planning Commission statistics as fanciful. He said that the Commission was not attempting to mislead, but the reality was that a small number of rich people were pulling up the average to present a wholly unrealistic picture.

So what shall we call the latest debate: “Bees Kuber banaam Tees Karod Gareeb” debate?

My question to the PM is: Do you call this INCLUSIVE GROWTH?

Indeed, it is my charge against the UPA government that, in its tenure, growth has become most exclusive and India has become the most unequal society in its long history.

I am constrained to say that the President’s Address does not even show any concern for the growing socio-economic disparities.

Not even a mention of Kisan Suicides!

Mr. Speaker Sir, you will agree — and the entire country knows this — that a matter of deep concern for all those who think about India’s development is the serious agrarian crisis.

This crisis has driven a large number of kisans to commit suicide. I do not want to suggest any number, because the figures are horrifying, if recent reports by the well-known journalist P. Sainath in The Hindu are to be believed.

Sainath has recently won the Magsaysay award for his writings on rural poverty. His reports in The Hindu claim that nearly one lakh kisans committed suicide in the last decade and that a kisan commits suicide in India every 30 minutes.

I do not know the facts and figures. It is for the government to confirm or refute the figures published in The Hindu. But what I find equally horrifying is that the Government does not even acknowledge this fact in the President’s Address.

Rs. 60,000 crore loan waiver for farmers

Yes, I can hear Congress leaders saying, “We have waived Rs. 60,000 crore loans for farmers.”

Yes, we will join the issue threadbare when have a debate in the House on the Budget.

But let me point out certain amusing and intriguing aspects of this announcement.

The first amusing aspect is about the unseemly competition in the ruling coalition over who should take credit for writing off farm credit.

I see Congress party’s hoardings all over the capital taking credit for loan waiver. But the Prime Minister’s photo is nowhere to be seen.
Instead, all credit is being given to Smt. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

It made me wonder: Is this whole exercise about giving credit relief to farmers or taking political credit for the Congress party’s dynastic leadership?

The intriguing part of this announcement is: The Finance Minister has made no provision for the loan waiver in his Budget.

He is yet to announce how the banks will be reimbursed the amount of Rs. 60,000 crore.

What one reads in newspapers is that the government could issue bonds to the banks.

This means that the bonds would have to redeemed by a future government.

In other words, the government has placed the burden of making good the loan waiver on the shoulders of a future government.

It would have done the UPA government good if it had taken the burden upon itself.

If the burden of redeeming the bonds — or of reimbursing the banks in any other way — is upon future governments, the least that is expected of the UPA government is not to take political credit for an achievement that is not truly yours.

Dynasticism dominates government schemes!

Mr. Speaker Sir, on the issue of the Congress party’s surrender to dynastic politics, I must mention one more thing here. I was both bemused and disturbed when I went through the Address and listed all the schemes and projects and institutions mentioned in it. Every single one of them is named after persons from one single family. There is not a single scheme mentioned in the Address that bears the name of any other national leader.

Indira Gandhi National Tribal University

• Indira Gandhi National Old Age Pension Scheme
• Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship
• Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology
• Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission

Mr. Speaker Sir, I want to know: “Hasn’t India produced any other great men and women? Shouldn’t there be schemes and programmes and institutions to perpetuate the memory of other towering national leaders? Such as —

• Sardar Patel
• Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan?
• Dr. Rammanohar Lohia?
• Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee
• Anna Durai?
• A.K. Gopalan?
• Biju Patnaik?
• Morarji Desai?

I think the time has come to bring in legislation to restrict the number of government programmes and institutions named after persons from one particular family.

Women’s reservation bill

Mr. Speaker Sir, the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA had promised, and I quote:

“The UPA government will take the lead to introduce legislation for one-third reservations for women in vidhan sabhas and in the Lok Sabha.”

As a matter of fact, Indian women are facing many problems. They have many other demands, too. But the CMP mentioned only this demand, it made only this promise.

I want to know from the Prime Minister why his government has not fulfilled this promise so far. I also want to know why this promise is not even mentioned in the President’s Address.

It cannot be that he has a fear of the bill not getting enough support to be passed. In these four years, the government has made no effort whatsoever to take the opposition into confidence.

As far as my party is concerned, the BJP was the first to pass a formal resolution in this matter way back in 1994. A women’s rally of the BJP’s Mahila Morcha held only last week — with the participation of a lakh of women from all over the country, it was one of the biggest women’s rallies ever — has urged the government to introduce the bill in this session of Parliament.

I have myself declared at the rally — and I reiterate the same here —that my party will support the bill.

But it seems that you have no political will to fulfill your promise. Or else, it is perhaps that you do not want the world to know that you took the BJP’s cooperation in fulfilling this promise.

Terrorism
Mr. Speaker Sir, I was going through para 49 to see the government’s approach to fighting terrorism and Left-wing extremism.

There is no mention of the international linkages of terrorism in India. Is the government unaware of it or does the government deny it?

No mention of terrorist crimes in our immediate neighbourhood. A former PM of Pakistan was assassinated by fidayeen terrorist. Earlier, when Benazir Bhutto returned to her country after a long exile, the attempt on her life killed as many as 135 persons.

Similarly, in para 57 in the foreign policy section, there is no mention that the government wants Pakistan to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure and terrorist training camps on its soil, from where terrorism is being exported into our country.

I am raising these issues because the government seems to be unwilling to accept certain basic truths about terrorism as it has been operating in India.

It is also shocking that there is no concern over the uncertainty in Nepal, how the rise of Maoism in Nepal is inseparably linked to the threat to India’s internal security.

Home Minister contradicts Prime Minister !

Mr. Speaker Sir, as far as Naxalism is concerned, it is mystifying that there is no clarity at the very top level in the government.

Prime Minister on 22.December. 2007, while addressing a chief ministers’ conference on internal security, said: "Left-wing extremism is single biggest security challenge to the Indian state.”

Less than two months later, on 16 February 2008, Home Minister Shivraj Patil, in an interview to Karan Thapar on CNBC, said: “Naxalism is not the single biggest threat to the country’s internal security.”

What kind of government is this in which the PM is contradicted by his own Home Minister?!!

Indo-US nuclear deal

Mr. Speaker Sir, the President’s Address states that the government is still hopeful about concluding the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Parliament has a right know the basis of this optimism.

I have a suspicion that the government is pursuing some sort of a “HIDDEN AGENDA”, behind the back of Parliament and also behind the back of its own supporting parties.

As the debate in the last session of Parliament clearly showed, a majority of MPs are not in favour of this deal.

The Prime Minister did not speak in Parliament in the debate in the last session, which again confirmed my suspicion that not all is transparent about this deal.

We in the NDA had demanded a parliamentary committee to discuss the deal and formulate a view on the matter.

The government did not agree.

Instead, there was a separate extra-parliamentary Joint Committee comprising only UPA and Left Front members.

We hear from the media that this committee had many meetings — and the outcome of each meeting apparently was to meet again.

Now that the committee has met a sufficient number of times, Parliament has a right to know what transpired in these meetings and what was the final outcome?

I would like the Prime Minister to state clearly if he is pushing ahead with the deal, even if the UPA-Left committee fails to evolve a consensus, even if the majority in Parliament is against the deal.

If he does, he will be guilty of compromising India’s strategic defense. He will be guilty of weakening India’s strategic independence.
For illusory Energy Security, the PM is jeopardizing India’s National Security.

The PM has said in Parliament that the deal is only about civil nuclear energy cooperation.

He is misleading the nation.

I just can’t believe that a stream of American big-wigs will come to India just for the sake of adding a few thousand megawatts to India’s nucear energy capacity.

There is something else afoot. The Congress party’s leadership has never been in favour of India’s nuclear weapons status.

And, through this deal, it wants to ensure India’s de-nuclearisation.

It wants to take India into the NPT through the backdoor.

I would like to warn the Congress leadership that this would be a HUGE BETRAYAL OF THE NATION.

No mention of fight against corruption

Mr. Speaker Sir, a government’s character and performance are known as much by what is mentioned in the President’s Address as by what is not. I read and re-read the text of the Address to see if there is any mention of the government’s resolve to fight corruption. There was none.

I could draw only two conclusions: either the UPA government believes that there is no corruption in the system; or the fact is that there is so much corruption that it probably believes that silence is the best way of not attracting attention to it.

Mr. Prime Minister, I do hope that you know what is being talked about the level of corruption in your government. It is not enough for you to be a person of integrity. Now that you are the head of the government, you have a duty to see that your team also gives a good account of probity. I must say you have failed completely in this duty.

I shall not give specifics, except one. This House has a right to know from the Prime Minister all the facts attending to the unofficial exoneration of Ottavio Quattrocchi in the Bofors case. First, your government allowed his frozen bank accounts in London to be re-opened. Later, you ensured that he was not brought back to India to stand trial even after being detained in Argentina.

Mr. Prime Minister, every government works by sending out signals about its commitments. These signals are received by the system as a whole through the government’s action — and non-action.

By allowing Quattrocchi to go scot-free, and by brazenly misusing the institutions of the state for the purpose, you have given strong signals that fighting corruption is not your commitment at all.

It is my charge, Mr. Prime Minister, that you have indulged in political corruption by doing the bidding of the person who has made you Prime Minister.

You have knowingly and deliberately allowed your ministers to misuse the CBI, misuse the government machinery to let Quattrocchi off the hook.

• You have a duty to answer this House on the Quattrocchi issue.
• Smt. Sonia Gandhi has a duty to answer this House on the Quattrocchi issue.

You cannot hide behind the cover of silence. Your continued silence is a contempt of Parliament.

Telangana

Mr. Speaker Sir, there is no mention of Telangana in the President’s address.

The UPA government’s CMP had stated:

“The UPA government will consider the demand for the formation of a Telangana state at an appropriate time after due consultations and consensus.”

Four years have passed. Yet, the “appropriate time” has not come.

The Congress party has betrayed the people of Telangana.

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