Sengupta: Mass support

New Delhi, Sept. 23: The Congress-led government is looking at a six-point populist agenda that includes debt relief for farmers, extension of the scope of the rural job scheme, SEZ-like clusters for tiny entrepreneurs and insurance cover for unorganised workers.

Proposed by well known economist and Congress Rajya Sabha MP Arjun Sengupta, the agenda is now with the Planning Commission.

Sengupta has held meetings with Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi and written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the issue.

In a letter to Singh, Sengupta stated that he was “deeply worried that the Left will now broaden their attack under pressure from sectarians, who are determined to break away from the coalition... in broad-basing their offensive they would now increasingly highlight the social and economic issues”.

An option is a “minimum programme of action that can be seen as specifically targeting the poorest of the poor, to pre-empt all pressures from the Left and other oppositions”.

Sengupta admits the Congress-led coalition government will not succeed in implementing the programme in the short period of time left with it.

He stated that “we can demonstrate the commitment to this programme which should be designed appropriately and should be propagated by our party throughout the country”.

The Prime Minister’s Office has asked the Planning Commission, headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, to study the proposal and get back to it by early next week.

One of the proposals is to extend the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to all districts and give jobs to the poor throughout the year instead of the present 100-day norm.

For the 300-million workers in the unorganised sector, Sengupta has suggested a minimum social security cover, encompassing health benefits, disability support, old age pension and provident fund.

In agriculture, the proposal is to broaden the base of the debt relief programme. The focus should be on loans to small and marginal farmers.

Sengupta has suggested clusters for tiny and micro entrepreneurs with tax and other relief similar to special economic zones.

He has also proposed a skill formation programme for the urban unemployed and a better coverage of the public distribution system (PDS).

In a separate letter to Sonia Gandhi, Sengupta praised farm minister Sharad Pawar’s decision to import grain throughout the year for the PDS. The letter says that “if the FCI cannot procure enough, it should import freely .... playing the market, taking advantage of our large foreign exchange reserves”.

The economist-turned- politician argues that notwithstanding high rates of economic growth and large expenditures on social development, the “benefits of all the programmes usually bypass the poor and vulnerable unless they are specifically targeted to them”.