Industries will stem migration of labour: PM

Industrial employment was the key to meeting the challenge of unskilled rural labour migrating to urban areas, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here today.

Industrial employment was the key to meeting the challenge of unskilled rural labour migrating to urban areas, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said here today.

Singh, who laid the foundation stone of the Rs 5,460-crore Assam gas cracker project — now christened Brahmaputra Cracker and Polymer Ltd (BPCL) — at Lepetkata near here, said it was industrial development which would set the pace of national economic growth in the years to come.

“India is on the mark. I expect industrial development to once again set the pace of national economic growth. We need industrial employment, which

alone can generate employment for our youth, especially for unskilled labour migrating from rural to urban areas,” he said.

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Interestingly, the foundation stone of the same project was laid over 12 years ago — on November 24, 1995 — by the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao at another site, Tengakhat, about 14 km east of Dibrugarh. While the site was abandoned following objections by the Indian Air Force which has a base nearby and Lepetkata was chosen, the project was offered to Reliance which sat over it for over a decade until the government brought in public sector players to set it up.

The gas cracker project is now a joint venture between GAIL India Ltd (70 per cent), Oil India Ltd, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd and the government of Assam, with the last three holding 10 per cent equity each. Prime Minister Singh described as “unfortunate” the inability of successive regimes since the Congress government headed by P V Narasimha Rao to complete the project, and urged promoters to complete the same in less than the stipulated time frame of 60 months.

“We must place this project on a super fast track. It must be implemented in the shortest possible time,” Singh said, pointing out that this was the biggest-ever industrial investment made in Assam.

The history of the gas cracker project, which was first conceived in 1991, dates back to 1985 when the Assam Accord signed by Rajiv Gandhi with the All Assam Students’ Union provided for better utilisation of Assam’s natural resources, including gas and crude oil. Over a lakh new jobs were expected to be created in various ancillary units.