After criminally wasting over 9 years and pushing the nation to the brink of another 1991 scenario, prime minister Manmohan Singh has suddenly found merit in speeding up decision making and said his comatose government will act decisively to revive economic growth that set to touch another rock bottom this year and to also prove the nay-sayers wrong. "I do not underestimate the task before us. As the 12th Plan points out, our preferred scenario of strong inclusive growth at an average rate of 8 percent will not come from business as usual policies. We have to act boldly and decisively" he said while releasing a book 'An agenda for growth: Essays in honour of P Chidambaram'.
Observing that the last couple of years have been challenging, he said, "we must view this as a short term deceleration. Our government is determined to once again accelerate the pace of change. Once again, we will prove the naysayers and Cassandras of doom wrong." Over the past decade, Singh said, when the economy has absorbed the full benefit of the reforms that began in 1991, it has grown at close to 7.5 percent. "Our growth rate has slowed down to 5 percent in 2012-13. But this should not make us feel disheartened and imagine that we have slipped back to our old growth rate." He further said the government has to deal with macroeconomic imbalances and major challenges in key sectors such as energy, water, and land. Highlighting the achievements of the past five years, he said the growth has been much more inclusive. "Poverty is falling faster even though there are disputes going on among the professional colleagues about the pace of change. Per capita consumption in real terms in rural areas has increased four times faster from 2004-05 than it did earlier.
The erstwhile BIMARU states are doing much better," he added. Parliamentary majority alone is not enough to pursue reforms as there are differences within parties, Singh said adding, "for reforms to be credible it is necessary that a wide cross section of society should understand the need for and accept, the policy changes that a government wishes to make". Singh, who is credited with opening up the economy, said reforms do not happen just because there is a professional consensus. "In a democracy, reform – be it of economic policy or of institutions – is essentially a political process. We have to build a sufficiently wide political consensus in favour of the policies we wish to adopt," the Prime Minister said.
