I’ve no promises to make, I’ve promises to keep: PM

While acknowledging the role of private enterprise and individual initiative, Singh said, ‘‘But governments cannot be wished away, especially in a developing country like ours where the government has an important role to play. The challenge for economic reform today is to breathe new life into government so that it can play a positive role where it must.’’ Adopting a Nehruvian tone, Singh’s speech was more in the nature of a long, rambling school-headmasterish conversation with the people of India, full of broad brush strokes that aimed at the “big picture” and eschewed the nitty-gritty detail.

Although Parliament resumes its Budget Session tomorrow and is likely to be rocked by the issue of Taslimudddin and tainted ministers, by an outcry against rising inflation and turmoil in Manipur, the speech did not directly refer to any of the “burning issues” of the day. But there were enough elliptical allusions to all these questions. Without mentioning tainted ministers, he stressed the need for probity in public life and called for “a code of conduct for all political parties, a code of ethics for all individuals in public life, and a code of best practices for the govt at all levels.”

There was no mention of Manipur per se but the need for “special attention” to North-eastern states and Jammu & Kashmir—”the pattern of development must be such as to create new opportunities for job creation so that the youth of these regions can look to the future with renewed hope and confidence.” The need to sort out inter-state river disputes—a festering problem highlighted most recently by the Punjab CM’s defiance—was similarly couched in a generalised statement. “The waters of our sacred rivers have for centuries nurtured our civilisation… We cannot allow these waters to divide us,’’ he said, without spelling out how exactly this noble ideal could be achieved.

As far as the big picture was concerned, Manmohan Singh’s policy prescriptions were largely a reiteration of the commitments made in the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP). He reiterated the ‘‘seven priority sectors for focussed attention’’—agriculture, water, education, health care, employment, urban renewal and infrastructure, describing them as seven pillars of the “development bridge” that India must cross to “ensure higher economic growth and more equitable social and economic development.”

But unlike the previous NDA government which focussed on grand schemes— Golden Quadrilateral, river inter-linking, Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana—, the emphasis today was more on processes than projects, on the promise of a “new deal for rural India,’’ of more effective delivery systems, of greater transparency and accountability.

In fact, the repeated emphasis on government as the engine for development went hand-in-hand with the need to make government more accoutable. ‘‘For govt to be able to deliver results, we must reform the functioning of government. We have to make officials accountable—make government more transparent,’’ the Prime Minister said. While renewing emphasis on the role of government, the PM also went a step beyond the current favourite idea of “public-private partnership” to hold out a vision of a government-people partnership.