NEW DELHI, March 9: The BJP, on the doorstep of power, has turned its guns towards what it calls ‘‘wrong economic policies’’ pursued by the United Front government during its 18 month tenure. Chalking out what could be the BJP’s approach to the reform process, senior BJP leader, Murli Manohar Joshi said that the economy should be first liberalised, followed by modernisation and then globalisation and not the reverse, as was the case in UF regime.
‘‘If mere opening up is considered liberalisation, then it would do no good to the country,’’ he said, adding the reform process had not percolated down to the agriculture sector, the self employed and small scale sector.
The topmost priority of any economic agenda should be to tackle the unemployment problem and for that to happen ‘‘there is an urgent need to reform the reform process,’’ he said.
Citing the plight of farmers in Andhra Pradesh, he said, ‘‘as many as 200 cotton growers have committed suicide due to crop failure and if only the agriculturalsector had not been neglected, this misery of farmers could have been avoided.’’ Dr Joshi said the country’s food security was in great danger because of the WTO prescription for raising the mandatory import of agricultural products from three per cent to eight per cent.
America wants India to be more dependent on imports rather than domestic production, he said. ‘‘America wants India to be a food-shortage country. Food is the biggest weapon in their hands and we must guard against it.’’
Indian industry was under the clutches of ‘inspector raj’. Because of the wrong approach to liberalisation, Indian investors were not forthcoming, he said supporting domestic liberalisation first.
Wrong prioritisation had led to several Indian infrastructure majors like TISCO and SAIL going into the red. ‘‘Indian cement industry is in doldrums due to reduced import tariffs,’’ he said.
Joshi said he was in favour of disinvestment commission being totally independent and supported disinvestment of public sectorundertakings in non-priority areas like hotels.Criticising delays in anti-dumping investigations he alleged that it was a deliberate attempt to help the dumpers.
He also made a case for increasing import tariffs since the previous government had ‘‘over-reached’’ in meeting the WTO targets for tariff reductions.
