The Congress, terming employment generation as the core and foundation of its draft economic resolution, said that India’s “new economic vision and action will be recrafted from the current obsession with capital and move more towards labour”.
The economic resolution as well as the international resolution — the draft for which expresses deep concern over the prevailing border situation along China — will be two of the resolutions adopted by the party in its ongoing 85th plenary session in Raipur.
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Presenting the economic resolution, former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath also identified unemployment as the biggest challenge before India and said that social harmony was a prerequisite for employment creation through foreign investment.
While the draft resolution credits the government led by the party for heralding a new beginning by liberalising the economy in 1991, it adds that the “time has now come for India to re-evaluate and re-prioritize its economic development roadmap in the backdrop of the twin attack on our economy, namely increasing unemployment and inequality”.
On employment avenues, the draft talks about State-led initiatives such as an urban NREGA similar to the MNREGA, generous loans to self-help groups to create “thousands of jobs” and “repeats the party’s commitment to fill all vacancies in government and semi-government bodies, the Armed forces, the paramiltary forces and public sector undertakings immediately”. But it also acknowledges that the private sector will be the “biggest and the best creator of jobs”.
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“We need a new economic performance metric that correlates directly to the median Indian’s living standards, economic mobility, and hopes for a better future,” the draft says.
Acknowledging that the nature of work is also changing, the draft says the party believes in protecting the rights of gig workers – whose number is estimated to treble by 2029-30 from the NITI Aayog figure of 77 lakh as on June 2022 – and “providing them social security measures”.
It further says that tax policy too should be reoriented towards employees and wages, besides investments and profits. On another key taxation-related policy — GST — that has often led to Centre-State tussles, the draft talks of extending GST compensation to States for five more years.
While on the one hand, the draft says that it will remove “all unjustified fiscal restrictions” such as reducing the borrowing limit, the party has also expressed concerns about the growing outstanding internal and external debt and other liabilities of the Government of India.
International resolution
While the draft international resolution of the Congress says that when it comes to the safety of our brave jawans and the integrity of our territory, the INC unreservedly supports the Army and the government, it slams the BJP government at the Centre for failing to stand up for India’s security and territorial sovereignty vis a vis the prevailing situation on the line of actual control between India and China.
“Sadly the government has failed to take the people of India into confidence about the repeated transgressions by Chinese military at various points across the Line of Actual Control, while it continues to engage with China in an unstructured manner. This has emboldened China to be even more aggressive. India needs to communicate this clearly without obfuscation, and urgently enhance capabilities to deter China from attempting any military coercion along the LAC,” the draft says.
While it advocates enhanced collaboration with the United States in various areas — from trade to climate change — it also talks about the need to remain vigilant against Pakistan.
