Letter to Congress Workers

Dear friends,

The first budget of the UPA has been successfully presented. The budget has not only kept in mind the charter on which its constituents fought the elections: "progress and reform with a human face", it also shows how the reigns of government have passed over to a new regime smoothly, testifying once again to India’s proud democratic tradition.

The budget is set upon doing away with the inequalities that have crept into the reform process. The needs of the ordinary man have been kept firmly at the center in keeping with the charter of the Common Minimum Programme. This has been done through putting in place funds and policies that revitalize our agriculture sector, sadly neglected during the past five years, and by allocating further resources for other social development programmes such as employment generation, tax rebates for war widows, the raising of non-taxable income, and an employment guarantee scheme. The railway budget by not raising fares and by introducing special schemes for war widows and unemployed youth has also tried to address this issue.

While the budget has set the task of planning for the next year, we must ensure that it is implemented to the full. The UPA government, and the Congress as the largest single party, are determined that this programme receives the widest possible support at all levels. India is set on the path of economic development and high economic growth balanced with social development. As the Budget shows, the Congress Party and its allies are not anti-reform. It is the large scale privatization of public assets under the BJP regime, the inequitable distribution of the fruits of reform that the Congress party has systematically opposed. The Congress is the oldest party in India and has many years of experience in governance. Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru as the first prime minister set high standards of governance and transparency. This tradition continued under successive Congress Prime-ministers and is set to do so today.

This inclusive ideology is also visible in the educational reforms that are being carried out. One of the biggest challenges in front of the nation today is to ensure that our youth grow up in an unprejudiced environment where they learn not just religious values but also imbibe the spirit of secular nationalism that Congress leaders always swore by. It is this spirit that can take the country forward into the twenty-first century. The BJP, sadly, misunderstood the nation when it propagated a narrow sectarian agenda both ideologically and economically. The electoral verdict and the satisfaction of the common man with the budget proves that it is the Congress Party that represents the will of the people today, and we will all work together to implement the policies and the charter of the UPA government.