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Dear friends: Once again we celeberated our Independece Day on 15th August, 2000.we have been politically independent for now more than 53 ,years .We will see that in the balance sheet the points are much higher. While we do decide to take stock we must realize one very glaring fact, that in these more than 50 years, the population of India has increased more than three times i.e from about 34 crore people of divided India we have now crossed 100 crore. And yet thanks to the improvement in health and services and availability of better food,the life expectancyhas increased from 27 years to 67 years ,in this short period. It is due to the vision and determination of the first prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and his great collegues ,like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,Maulana Azad and others That the foundation for a new advanced nation was laid.we had to begin practically from scratch .India did not even produce a safety pin .The production of infrastructure inputs Like irrigation ,electricity ,steel fertilizers ,cements etc.was negligible.The installed capacityof power was just 1500 MW,steel production was less than one million tonnes. There were no major hydro-electrical dams like'Bharatnangal Dam' and 'Nagarjuna Sagar' . Due to planning process and utilization of public funds for infrastructure projects over the last 50 years , India has been able to achieve substantial growth in the production of the vital infrastructure utilities .Let us remember that in those early years there was no private sector or big private sector or big private companies , who could invest in these areas. Even today ,with full liberalization ,there is hardly any private individual or corporate body which has come forward to start a single river valley project,or major power plant or steel plant. . Apart from these basic infrastructure fields,the growth in the area of science including Atomic energy .Space technology ,informatics and communication ,in the field of medical education and health has been phonemically .In fact India has through it's diverse quality education been proving highly qualified personnel to the advanced personnal to the advanced countries like United States Of America and United Kingdom in the fields of Science ,health, engineering etc.
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Yet, all these achievements get overshadowed when we recognize the reality that after the initial start of well planned development ,stagnation set in the working of the major Public sector undertakings .The mauin reason was the lack of competitive norms of management.we are functioning as if we were behind closed doors and we did not have to worry about competitive norms in terms of quality and cost of production. We thought that public money could be utlilized for maximum employement in the public sector unit themselves .In the process we mwde them started incurring heavy losses .This ,we justified in the name of social purpose !!!The PSU's did not generate adequate surplus as was envisaged by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his famous Industry policy resolution and as there was no inflow of adequate funds for the crucial Infrastructure areas growth became stunted . The solution lies in improving the functioning of the PSUs.We have even today excellent model like the NTPC to be followed. Working class organizations must rise to the occasion and agree to play a cooperative and participatory role to protect the livelihood of thousands of workers. Selling out the PSUs is not going to solve the main problem .The resources thus raised would be negligible and to take over the major infrastructure undertakings.' The soft option of surrendering to foreign multinationals institutions might appear easy and tempting .But this way lies the path to economic slavery.. The second war of independence for "Arthic Swaraj" can be fought and won only if We are determined to be self reliant.If even 25 crore of the 100 crore of our well to do citizens decide their pool their resources and make huge unaccounted income openly investible ,we can attend to most important task of providing productive employment To millions of youth in the rural areas themselves and thus attack the roots of poverty. It is for the Congress to take up this challenge and be in the vanguard of this war for "Arthic Swaraj" .We must take this pledge on this day of independence of reviving the policies and programmes of Indiraji,Nehruji and Rajivji which had helped the country to become self reliant in food grains.tTheir policies which had made Congree a party of poor are the only policies that can once again help the Congress in gaining the confidence and support of the people cutting across all divisive and fissiparous tendencies. The slogan today must be:-
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