Ficci toes BJP line, raises swadeshi flag
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA
New Delhi, Dec 28: All political parties should support `swadeshi', and foreign players should not be allowed to dominate local industry, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) has said.Toeing the line of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Ficci president KK Modi said foreigners could only supplement the efforts of Indians, but they cannot be dominant partners. Asked whether the BJP's emphasis on swadeshi worried or excited him, the Ficci president, in an interview to a private TV channel to be telecast on Monday, categorically said that all parties "should promote swadeshi". Modi, however, said he did not favour companies contributing directly to the political parties' kitties for funding their election campaigns. "We (the managers) are the trustees of the shareholders. Until and unless we can say that contributing to a party is in the interest of the business, we cannot decide.``My advice to all the Ficci members will be to get involved in the political process by
supporting parties which they believe will augur well for the country," he said. But individual corporate leaders could contribute to election funding, and contribution by cheque made good sense as tax laws allowed deductability.Under the Income-Tax Act, corporates are allowed to contribute up to 5 per cent of their average net profits of the past three years to political parties for claiming deduction from tax. Modi hit out at the government for the loss of investor faith and warned of an impending recession if steps were not taken to reverse the slowdown in the economy. The loss of investor faith was mainly due to the chasm that existed between what the Front government said and did, he said. "What led people to think twice was the difference between action and talk," he said. The Ficci president said that while both former prime minister HD Deve Gowda and prime minister IK Gujral consulted industry, it was never involved in implementation. "Both Gowda and Gujral talked to us...They should have
made sure that the bureaucracy, the people who take action at the ground level, actually moved forward," Modi said. Stating that the people are "dismayed" as they did not know whether the forthcoming parliamentary elections would return a stable government, he said `they don't know whether there will be a solution'. Ficci also called upon the government to invest heavily in infrastructure areas like roads and ports.Modi blamed the government for failing to spur investments adding the cutting down of plan expenditure signalled a slowdown in the economy. He also rapped half-hearted efforts to privatise the infratructure sector. "You cannot say that I am privatising power-generation but will not privatise the movement of raw material or fuel or that I will not make mining private," he said.
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
|
