
Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh pays tributes to Rajiv Gandhi on his 34th death anniversary
Shimla (Himachal Pradesh) [India], May 21 (ANI): Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu paid rich tribute to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on his death anniversary in Shimla. He garlanded the statue of Rajiv Gandhi at Sadbhawana Chowk, Chhota Shimla.
Sukhvinder Singh said, 'Rajiv Gandhi sacrificed his life for the unity and integrity of this country. Whenever there was a crisis in the country, Rajiv Gandhi never stepped back from making sacrifices. Today's 21st century India, the India of information revolution and digital revolution, was imagined by Rajiv Gandhi 40 years ago... The digital age started with his thinking, and the benefits we are getting today. Rajiv Gandhi was the thinking of the youth of this country, and today we are getting the benefits of his thinking...'
The Chief Minister also stated, 'The present state government was committed to realising the vision of former Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi in the state to uplift the weaker and marginal sections of the society'.
Recalling his immense contributions, he said that Rajiv Gandhi laid his life for the unity and integrity of the country and laid the groundwork for several transforming initiatives that propelled the progress and prosperity of the Nation'
Sukhvinder Singh said that the present state government has introduced the Rajiv Gandhi Day Boarding School Yojna to improve education standards.
He said that in each assembly constituency, these schools were being established with modern facilities and other infrastructure to benefit the students residing in the rural areas of the State. He said the state government was also implementing the Rajiv Gandhi Swarojgar Start-Up Yojna, where youths would be provided loans to start their avocations. Under the Scheme, unemployed youth were also offered a 50 per cent subsidy for purchasing e-taxis. The Chief Minister also administered a pledge of national unity and integration of the country.
Later, he also paid floral tributes to former Prime Minister late Rajiv Gandhi at H.P. Secretariat and administered the oath of Anti-Terrorism Day to the officers and officials on the occasion.
Deputy Chief Minister Mukesh Agnihotri, PCC Chief Pratibha Singh, Health and Family Welfare Minister Dhani Ram Shandil, Revenue Minister Jagat Singh Negi, Minister Vikramditya Singh, Chairman, Tourism Development Corporation R.S. Bali, Mayor, Shimla Municipal Corporation Surender Chauhan, Deputy Mayor, Uma Kaushal, MLA Vivek Sharma, Vice Chairman, State Forest Development Corporation Kehar Singh Khachi, Chairman, State Cooperative Bank Devender Shyam, Chairman, Kangra Central Cooperative Bank Kuldeep Singh Pathania, Principal Advisor Media to Chief Minister Naresh Chauhan, Vice Chairman, HIMUDA Yashwant Chhajta, former MLA Satpal Raizada and other dignitaries also paid rich tributes to former Prime Minister.
Congress leaders Ashok Gehlot and Govind Singh Dotasara also paid homage to Rajiv Gandhi at a memorial. They remembered his vision for a modern India and his contributions to its development(ANI).
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Economic history: How the relationship between government and big business changed in India
Coming on top of each other, the four seismic developments of the second half of the 1980s completed the alienation of the upper-caste Hindus from the Congress and the Janata Dal. But what gave staying power to this shift was a simultaneous, and sudden, rise of insecurity in the intermediate bourgeoisie that industrialisation within a closed, autarchic economy had created in the previous half century. This had begun almost surreptitiously with the removal of several restrictions on imports in 1978 and a relaxation of India's industrial licensing laws in 1980 and 1981. But the pace of economic liberalisation had accelerated dramatically in 1985 after Rajiv Gandhi became the prime minister. In his first budget, presented in February 1985, the government abolished industrial licensing for about half of all industrial production. In the next few months, it also took a large number of controls on industrial modernisation off the rule book, reduced duties drastically on the import of capital goods, and eased the import of new technology. This rapid shift away from the crippling controls of the previous three decades, and the consequent return of modern industry into the consumer goods sector, fulfilled the essential economic requirement for the development of the fascist impulse, for it turned the seemingly solid ground that near-total import control, and a chronically shortage-ridden market, had created for the small and medium sized, owner-managed enterprises into quicksand. The shock this gave to it was almost as great as the shock that the onset of the 1930s' Great Depression had given to the Mittelstand in Germany. At first sight, India's industrial landscape in the 1980s and '90s did not look very different from that of other industrialised countries during the middle stages of their transformation into modern market economies. There was the same sprinkling of large, professionally managed, multi-product firms at the top of the hierarchy, followed by a body of medium and small enterprises that grew wider as their size became smaller. But the similarity in the size distribution of industry was deceptive. For while in countries where the growth of capitalism had been unhindered, or actively encouraged by the state (as in the 'tiger' economies of East and Southeast Asia), the relationship between small and large industry had evolved naturally from competition to symbiosis. As technology progressed and the minimum scale of efficient production expanded, small industry turned increasingly from producing final goods sold directly to the consumers to providing components, ancillaries and specialised services for supply to the large industrial companies that produced and marketed the finished goods. In sharp contrast, the vast majority of small-scale producers in India continued to produce final goods for the market in direct competition with the now liberated large-scale enterprises till the very end of the twentieth century. The reason for this 'arrested development' of capitalism was a singular, and in retrospect tragic, convergence of economic and political compulsions. Before 1957, the Indian government had followed a relatively open trade policy because it had accumulated large sterling balances during the Second World War, and therefore did not foresee the need to husband the use of foreign exchange. Its first Five Year Plan (1952–57), therefore, emphasised infrastructure, community development and agriculture, and left industrial development to the private sector. Economic autarchy was ushered in by the Second Five Year Plan, which emphasised self-reliance and gave priority to the establishment of heavy industry. This would have required tighter controls on non-essential imports anyway, but what really brought about a sudden and complete ban on all non-essential imports was a severe foreign exchange crisis in 1957 when the government belatedly realised that it had exhausted its sterling balances and was not exporting enough to carry on with its earlier liberal import policies. 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Those with import licences received a windfall profit of staggering dimensions overnight. Denied future imports, many of them asked their suppliers to help them set up manufacturing units for what they had previously been importing. Most manufacturers obliged, and sent equipment, often second-hand machinery that was to have been phased out, and took equity shares in the enterprise in return. In this way, commercial capital was converted into industrial capital overnight, and a new class of small and medium-sized enterprises was created. For the next ten years, hectic import substitution enabled industrial production to grow at an average of 9 per cent a year. By the time the foreign exchange crisis petered out, this new owner-manager class was firmly established and ready to make a bid for power. Its opportunity arose when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi abolished the privy purses of the princes and, in 1969, enacted the ban on company donations to political parties, described earlier, without creating an alternative mode of financing elections and electoral politics. Since political parties, including the Congress, still had to meet their expenses, they still needed large amounts of money, but now in cash. The intermediate class stepped into the breach and began to provide it. The change in the financial patrons of the Congress party did not take long to get reflected in economic policy. Professionally managed businesses found it far more difficult to give unaccounted donations. When they said so, they were told openly by party treasurers and fundraisers to find ways of doing so 'or else…'. The relationship between government and big business therefore, changed overnight from one of cosy co-operation to one of barely concealed hostility. The businessmen who found no difficulty in giving cash were the owner-managers of small enterprises and traders. This class led an insecure existence at the best of times. Its control over the market was virtually non-existent; its access to bank finance at reasonable rates of interest was limited; its dependence upon the government for infrastructure – power, water, communications and transport – was total. Consequently, its 'transaction costs' (the bribes it had to pay) were higher. It lived in mortal dread of any policy change that would enable modern enterprise to enter the fields it had chalked out for itself. Mrs Gandhi's ban on company donations to political parties, and its consequent need for clandestine donations, gave it the opportunity to convert its growing economic power into political power. Within a decade, the Congress had transformed itself from being an ally of modern, large-scale industry into an ally of this new, intermediate bourgeoisie. Between 1970 and 1973, the Indira Gandhi government passed a spate of laws that cut all remaining links with big business, and turned India into an inward-looking siege economy. A Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act defined monopoly companies as those with total assets of more than $7 million and those that controlled more than one-third of the market for a product. An Industrial Licensing Policy amendment act barred 'big business' from investing in any but the core sector, ie, basic metals, heavy engineering and chemicals industries. It permitted even this only when they could further prove that the proposed investment would not make them a monopolist. By an amendment to the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, the government also banned foreign investment except in 100 per cent export-oriented ventures. 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As if all this did not give sufficient protection to small-scale industry, the government also explicitly reserved more and more products for manufacture exclusively by it. The number of such products rose from an already high 177 in 1972 to 837 in 1983. So comprehensive was this list that it virtually blocked any large company from entering the consumer goods sector. From garments to electrical goods, to transistor radios and household appliances, virtually every Fast Moving Consumer Good (FMCG) was reserved for the small-scale sector. Thus, in the mid-eighties, this 'intermediate' manufacturing sector had 853,000 industrial units, produced 5,000 consumer products, employed 9.6 million workers and, including the output of the public sector, accounted for over 40 per cent of total industrial output. 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