Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday called the Dadri lynching a stray incident and said that though the Congress and Left thinkers and activists were projecting India as an intolerant society, the truth was otherwise.
Mr. Jaitley said it was incumbent upon every well-wisher of India, including the present government, to ensure that none of his actions or statements played into the hands of those who wanted to obstruct India’s growth.
He made the remarks in a Facebook post titled Ease of Doing Business. The post follows a report from Moody’s Analytics that warned Prime Minister Narendra Modi that unless he reined in BJP members, India risked losing domestic and global credibility. The report expressed concern at what it called the belligerent provocation of minorities, which raised “ethnic tensions.”
Without naming Moody’s Analytics, Mr. Jaitley sought to allay such concerns. The Dadri lynching, he said, was both unfortunate and condemnable and the guilty would be punished.
“Notwithstanding such aberrations, India remains a highly tolerant and liberal society… India has repeatedly rejected intolerance… It does not respond to provocations.”
Accusing the Congress in the main and Left thinkers of ideological intolerance to the BJP, Mr. Jaitley said they “obstruct Parliament and do not permit reforms which will bring credit to the Modi government.”
By structured and organised propaganda, they also created an impression that there was social strife in India, he said.
Since 2002, the Prime Minister [Narendra Modi] himself had been the worst victim of ideological intolerance. “The obstructers have a simple plan — if they can’t fight politically, they fight with hostile propaganda,” he said. The perpetrators of this propaganda never allowed alternative viewpoints to grow at universities, academic institutions or cultural bodies they controlled, Mr. Jaitley said.
The improvement in India’s ranking in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business report, modest though, marked the reversal of an adverse trend, he said, hoping that the steps taken in the last 17 months would push up India’s position significantly as the announcements translated into action. Investors no longer queued up before ‘Mantralayas’ in Delhi to lobby for policy changes or approvals, he said.
The Minister highlighted the Centre’s decision last week to issue an ordinance for amending the Arbitration Law so as to make arbitrations cheaper, faster and free from judicial intervention.
For quicker adjudication of investment-related matters, a commercial division was being constituted at all High Courts, he said. This mechanism would help to improve the enforceability of contracts, an area in which India was relatively poor.
He said the steps being taken by the States to emulate the Union government’s initiatives to promote the ease of doing business, and with the spirit of competitive federalism, was encouraging.
The Gujarat model of Global Investors Meet was replicated in Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Punjab. Rajasthan would make a similar attempt this month.
