KT NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI , Feb.
12: The Bhartiya Janata Party has quietly started scaling down its "feel good" hype with its spokesman Arun Jaitley it will take 20 years to solve the problems.
In his daily press briefing at the party headquarters here, Jaitley remarked: "The country of this size with problems will have to continue this progress set in motion by the Vajpayee Government for 20 years." Admitting that all the problems cannot be solved overnight as the Congress expects by finding holes in the government putting India in the fast economic mode, Jaitley said: " Lot of distance has to be covered but our policies make the Indians walk around in the world with heads high." He said the Vajpayee Government has set the direction and created an environment of confidence building.
It is the maturity of the leadership and the political party that has given a reasonable confidence to the society to make it feel good, Jaitley said.
The BJP's turnaround to play down the "feel good" factor stems from the Congress going full blast telling the people to check for themselves if they enjoy the fruits of the achievements the government is claiming.
That is why Jaitley sought to stress that the government has put the people on the "feel good" path to hope for a better tomorrow.
Stressing that the BJP was not following the rightist economic policies unleashed by the Congress in 1991, Jaitley asserted that it was only carrying forward "what we said from the Jan Sangh days." Moreover, he said in 2004, the Congress is not even certain about the direction of its economic policy.
He decried the Congress and its president Sonia Gandhi trying to talk down achievements of the country by questioning the progress of the country that has created a "feel good" climate.
"It was Congress that had for several decades till the economic reforms process started had put the country on economic slow track when the rest of the world was progressing," Jaitley said while pointing out that it was this reason that the economists had coined slow growth rate of 3 to 3.5 per cent in India as "Hindu rate of growth." Ever since in the opposition, the Congress is, however, without a definite economic policy and many of its statements contradict what it had committed in early 90s through the economic reforms, Jaitley pointed out, stressing that this leaves one confused.
The economic growth of the country is being rubbished by a party that has no defined agenda for governance till date even while trying to conjure up an alliance, the BJP leader said.
When a reporter sought to point out that the rate of employment had declined despite all this claim of the economic growth, Jaitley shot back that the facts say otherwise and it is all propaganda.
He cited in this regarda report of the London School of Economics pointing out that the second highest job creation in 1993 was in India .
Even the fastest growing economy of America feels threatened from the job prospects in India , he affirmed.
Generation of the economic activities in the last three years has created job opportunities across the board, Jaitley affirmed.
