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| Manmohan Singh: 'We are framing a law for regulation of public procurement' | | Excerpts from Prime Minister's speech to Chief Secretaries of states on Feb 3 |
| Manmohan Singh / Feb 05, 2012, 00:12 IST |
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We live in uncertain times and no one knows this better than the Chief Secretaries of States. As a country, we face a whole range of challenges in diverse areas. In my message to the nation on the eve of the New Year, I had grouped these challenges into five broad categories. I consider it worthwhile to re-state these five categories here: one relates to livelihood security, second to realisation of economic security, third to energy security, fourth to ecological security and finally, the concerns with national security. It is important that all of us have a clear understanding of these challenges. Also, to effectively overcome these, the Centre and states need to work together. And, the Chief Secretaries have obviously a key role to play in ensuring this sort of outcome.
While we should recognise the difficulties that we are confronted with — and we must have strategies to cope with them — we must also have the faith that these difficulties are not insurmountable. Indeed, we have faced uncertain times before. We have faced crises and difficult odds. But each time our nation has emerged stronger. I have no doubt that whatever be the challenge; we have the will and the ability to achieve success, provided of course, that we all work together and with firm resolve.
I understand that one of the topics for focused discussion in your conference is transparent and accountable governance — effective public service delivery systems. Last year when I addressed the Chief Secretaries on February 4, 2011, I had emphasised the need for a systemic response that reduces the opportunities for corruption in our public life. I had stated that our government was committed to taking all legal and administrative measures to curb corruption in public life. I had also said we should make full use of advances in modern technology to improve the delivery of our public services system.
Let me say that we have moved substantially forward in these areas in the last one year. We have introduced in Parliament a Bill on Citizens’ Charter, which will empower citizens to demand services with appropriate standards from various government departments. The electronic delivery of services Bill has also been introduced in Parliament and, as the name suggests, it provides for electronic delivery of public services to our citizens. Unfortunately, the Lok Pal and Lokayuktas Bill could not be passed in the last session of Parliament, but I do hope that we would soon be able to enact a strong Lok Pal law. We are moving forward on framing a law for regulating public procurement. The national e-governance Plan is being implemented to make use of information and communication technology to improve delivery of services to our people. We have made rapid progress in providing Aadhaar numbers to about 13 crore residents, which will help in improving the delivery of programs, particularly those meant for the poor and the under-privileged, and in eliminating leakages. We have also recently approved the coverage of an additional 400 million residents under the Aadhaar scheme.
All this builds upon our earlier initiatives such as the Right to Information Act, the Judicial Accountability Bill and the Whistle Blowers Bill. But we still have a long way to go in our efforts for ensuring transparency, accountability and probity in public life. I would urge all of you to ensure that the Centre and states work together to move ahead to achieve these goals. The latest data show that our economy grew at the rate of 8.4 per cent in 2010-11. This was a creditable performance when seen in the background of a crisis-ridden world economy. But, growth in the current financial year is likely to be lower, between seven and 7.5 per cent, in a large measure due to the continuing uncertainty in the global economic environment.
Inflation was a persistent problem during the course of the last year, particularly regarding food items. Our government undertook several measures to ease the supply constraints that were a cause for rising prices. This coupled with the policy of monetary tightening that the Reserve Bank of India adopted has led to a continuous decrease in inflationary pressure in primary food articles in recent weeks. The overall inflation has also eased. But, monetary tightening together with a difficult global economic environment, particularly the lingering euro zone crisis, has impacted the rate of growth adversely.
As I had stated in the last conference of Chief Secretaries, and have also said on a number of other occasions, the key to controlling inflation in food articles on a sustainable basis lies in increasing agricultural production and productivity. And, it is here that the state governments have a crucial role to play. I am happy that together we have succeeded in achieving a very high growth rate of 6.6 per cent in agriculture during 2010-11. I would like to compliment the state governments for their positive role in this achievement. I would also urge them to give more attention to areas such as modernisation of the agricultural research and agricultural extension system, public investment in agriculture, and reform of the marketing system and practices. As an enabling provision, the creation of modern storage capacity including cold chains and post-harvest storage have now been included under the scheme for financial support to PPP in infrastructure, or viability gap funding scheme. There is a need to review and amend the agriculture produce marketing Act to enable farmers to bring their products to retail outlets and also allow retailers to directly purchase from the farmers. This would bring better remuneration to farmers, check wastage and allow competitive prices to prevail in retail markets.
The introduction of the food security Bill is a historic step that our government has taken. The Bill not only provides for an entitled quantity of foodgrains to every household from the public distribution system (PDS), it also contains provisions for food of appropriate nutritional standards, free of charge, for pregnant and lactating mothers and children up to the age of 14. These legal entitlements can become a reality only if we reform our PDS. I would urge you to pay urgent attention to end computerisation of the PDS. We should be in a position to effectively implement the Bill by the time it is enacted as an Act of Parliament.
Excerpts from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s speech to Chief Secretaries of States in New Delhi on February 3
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