2009 polls: UPA to let figures do the talking

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government seems to have begun shaping its plank ""which, it seems, will not be secularism or foreign policy achievements alone, but development with equity "" for the 2009 general elections.

The UPA hopes that comparing the last four years of the NDA government, which ended in May 2004, with its own achievements, will tell its own story.

A recent internal assessment concludes the UPA has done far better than the NDA on economic parameters like GDP, the farm sector, domestic savings, central government finances, export growth and FDI inflows.

Prepared by the Planning Commission, the document says that by mid-2008, the UPA's performance will look much better than the NDA's in roads, airports, ports, railways and even in power (where massive addition to generation capacity will be in place by 2007-08).

The better performance, the document asserts, has had a big impact on the quality of life of the aam admi, both directly through income generation and because of the revenue which finances these programmes. It adds that while poverty and unemployment are major concerns, the country will see a substantial reduction in poverty during the UPA's tenure.

Poverty declined from 26.1 per cent in 1999-2000 to 22.2 per cent in 2004-05 but the decline was not as rapid as was hoped. The GDP growth rate in the period was 6 per cent.

The UPA tenure has seen an average annual growth of 8.6 per cent from 2004, with a better balance in favour of agriculture and expanded anti-poverty programmes. "It is, therefore, possible that when the data become available by 2010, we will see a substantial reduction in poverty", it states.

On the employment front, the document points out that while total employment growth doubled to 13.5 per cent from 1999-2000 to 2004-05, the UPA's track record cannot be assessed as there is no comparable data for the period after 2004-05.

A recent Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development report has described India as having created more jobs than any other country.

However, this growth was largely in the unorganised sector, with the organised sector jobs hardly growing at all. The document adds this is because of excessively rigid labour laws that discourage expansion in labour-intensive industries.