Railways

There has been a marked deterioration in the safety of railways in the past few years. The Congress will accord the highest priority to ensuring passenger safety. Large parts of India are still ill served by the rail network. These areas will be brought into the system in a time-bound manner. All lines will be brought on broad guauge in a clear, time-bound manner. The organisation and managerial structure of the railways has to reflect new and emerging challenges and cannot remain frozen in time. The Congress will appoint a high-powered Railway Reforms Commission to suggest an effective management system for the railways of the 21st Century.

Rail-based mass transit systems in major metros and cities will be introduced on a substantial scale.

Banks

Financial sector reforms will be continued while at the same time strengthening the supervisory and regulatory apparatus for both banks and NBFCs. Steps will be taken to bring down the level of non-performing loans of banks to no more than 3-4% of their total assets over the next two years. Indian banks will continue to conform to international norms of prudential practice and norms.

Banks will be given greater autonomy to function commercially, introduce new technology, provide new services and offer new products, recruit laterally, raise capital from the market and restructure themselves through mergers and consolidation. Genuine managerial autonomy, competition and a new work culture will be fostered in the banking industry. This will give these banks the autonomy needed to meet the challenges of competition and customer service.

The spread of banks has to come down so that Indian companies will get the benefit of lower interest rates. Confidence will be instilled in the banking community to take normal commercial risks. Credit delivery systems will be made more effective and responsive.

International Trade and Investment

Immediate steps will be taken to revive the export momentum in the economy that was so much in evidence in the latter half of the eighties and the mid-1990s. India’s exports must grow by at least 15-20% per year on a sustained basis. All policy and procedural barriers to faster exports must be dismantled. Exports create employment and greatly assist in the diffusion of prosperity but high transaction costs and restrictive policies in areas like the small-scale sector are preventing India from increasing her exports and generating new employment. Government and industry will work closely together to help prepare a plan of action to cope with the new and emerging challenges in the international trading system. A special effort will be mounted in the areas of agriculture, textiles and pharmaceuticals. The Information Technology sector, specifically software, which has emerged as India’s newest motor of growth for exports, will be given every encouragement.

India will continue to meet all her international treaty and multilateral agreement obligations in a responsible and time-bound manner and will continue to work to use the WTO to gain additional market access for products and services of interest to India. It will proactively participate in all existing and proposed global discussions with a view to influencing the agenda and enhancing its bargaining strength. It will work with other countries to push for faster dismantling of controls on trade in textiles and agriculture. The objective of tariff policy will be to reach levels prevalent in south-east and East Asia in the next two to three years and global levels shortly thereafter.

India will continue to proactively encourage investment from foreign companies and overseas Indians. There is an entirely new generation of entrepreneurial overseas Indians, which is making a mark in countries like the Unites States. A special effort will be mounted to attract this group of investors and build enduring networks with them. In the last few years, India has received a direct foreign investment inflow of around $ 3 billion per year. This is a very low figure considering India’s requirement for investment and considering India’s requirement for investment and considering the global availability of capital. Our target should be to reach at least 8-10 billion dollars of foreign direct investment inflows early in the next decade.

Science and Technology

The 21st century will be the century driven by knowledge and innovation. India is uniquely placed to capitalise on this. S&T policy will be geared to making India a world-class knowledge society, to mobilising technology in support of agricultural and industrial growth and modernisation, to making India a major developer of knowledge-based products and services and to launching a national innovation movement. It is not just knowledge-based industries that will be promoted but equally important, the application of knowledge-based techniques and technologies in traditional industries as well that will get a boost.

Our laboratories, universities and research institutions need massive infusions of new blood, new equipment and a whole new management and work culture. They will be given flexibility, freedom of operation and financial autonomy. Specific programmes for the modernisation of agricultural universities and of national laboratories will be initiated. ISRO, DRDO and BARC will continue to get unstinted political and investment support. Their linkages with the rest of the economy will be maximised.

New technology development and application missions will be launched in the areas of defence, agriculture, energy, health and animal husbandry. Innovative ways of harnessing the expertise of Indian scientists and technologists working abroad will be introduced. The services of Indian entrepreneurs who have made a mark in global markets will also be enlisted both for their investment and professional expertise. India will be marketed as a major estimation for research, development and engineering. A world-class intellectual property rights system will be put in place. The Congress is concerned with the falling proportion of young men and women taking to science as a career. Science education will be completely overhauled.

The Technology Development Board will be funded fully to support projects for commercialising indigenous R&D and public-private partnerships in key areas. Biotechnology, renewable energy technologies and new materials will receive special focus. Biotechnology applications in agriculture and health will be emphasised.

Passenger reservations in railways have been made considerably easier through the use of computers. Similar national computerisation projects will be launched in areas of maximum impact like land records, tax administration, banks and public utilities. A special project for the use of modern technologies for the disabled and the handicapped, like computers for the blind, will be launched on a national scale.

Information Technology

It was Rajiv Gandhi who ushered India into the Information Age with the objective of mobilising the power of information technology to transform the lives of ordinary citizens. This will inform the Congress’s approach to the further development of the information technology industry. It is, of course, an area where India is already emerging as a world-class power, for which enabling policies will be adopted. But more importantly, the information technology revolution must be used to improve governance and resolve the basic problems of our people. Computerisation of key government departments, especially those that deal with the public on an on-going basis, will be carried out in a massive manner. Information kiosks will be opened all over the country like the public call telephone offices. Internet use will be expanded and be taken down to all towns and villages as well. Efforts at creating standard local language software will be given every encouragement.

Planning

National planning has a critical role to play in promoting balanced regional development, in mobilising resources for poorer regions, in ensuring the expansion of social infrastructure and in key strategic areas like energy where public investment will continue to be very important. The Congress believes that national planning, state planning and district planning are the three pillars on which economic growth and social transformation rest. The nature, instrumentalities and institutions of planning at each of these three levels must be made more effective and reflective of changing economic challenges and social imperatives. Planning must be made much more than an annual accounting and budgeting exercise. It must be the instrument for focussing attention on, and making appropriate choices between, alternative options. It involves articulating a vision of the future, formulating detailed operational plans for realising that vision, setting priorities, forcing choices and making trade-off, mobilising financial, technological and human resources and providing a machinery for implementation with strict time and cost schedules. Therefore, the planning process must begin from the bottom, involving the people themselves through the District Planning Committees as provided for in the Constitution.