THE CONGRESS PARTY'S PRIORITIES, PLANS AND PROGRAMMES

SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Public-private partnerships will form the basis of infrastructure expansion. Among other things, this could take the form of public expenditure and private management. Subsidies in the provision of infrastructure will be made explicit and provided through the budget of the central and state governments.

The railways have suffered immensely over the past few years with rail safety being a prime casualty. The Congress will move purposefully to modernize the vast railway network, keeping both the economic and social dimensions of the railways in mind.

The Congress will vastly accelerate the development and use of the country’s irrigation potential. By 2020, the presently known irrigation potential must be harnessed, for which long-term commitments of funds will be made. But even after this, two-fifths of cultivated area will still be rain-fed, particularly in central India with the bulk of India’s tribal population. The Congress and its partners will prepare and implement, on a much larger scale, plans for these regions.

The Congress will launch a special programme so as to ensure each household will have full access to reliable power in the next three to five years. The Congress will use India’s foreign exchange reserves creatively to significantly expand the existing public investment programme in power generation so as to add at least 6000-8000 MW of generating capacity every year. The public sector has a crucial role to play in power generation even as the private sector takes on an increased role in power distribution.

In order to supplement water availability and recharge the country’s groundwater resources, a local community-based National Rainwater Harvesting Programme will be launched to capture at least an additional 1% of India’s rain resources every year.

The Congress commits itself to work out a comprehensive programme of urban renewal based on public-private partnerships. This will lay particular emphasis on the modernization of urban transport, water supply and sanitation and control of pollution. Municipal administration will be revived and made financially self-sustaining.

Social housing schemes will be launched to meet the needs of the urban poor and to deal with the proliferation of slums. Technologies to promote low-cost housing will he deployed on a large scale.