Senior Congress leader and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram said education and health were being over-regulated and over-centralised, and that both subjects should be moved back to the State List from the Concurrent List.
“We should quickly democratise our approach to health and education. The Centre can come out with broad policies, but States have to implement [them] as per their needs,” he said, answering a query during an event in Chennai. Mr. Chidambaram was speaking on the topic: The Congress Economic model, organised by the All India Professionals' Congress, Tamil Nadu. “On education, States can compete with each other. The health needs of each State are different,” he said.
Mr. Chidambaram also spoke about the need to reset the economic policies, which was discussed at the party’s recent conclave in Udaipur. The party had come out with the Nav Sankalp Economic Policies (NSEP) document. He pointed out that the 1991 reforms had run its course for 30 years and India had achieved a lot.
Mr. Chidambaram said there was a lot of learning and unlearning and that there were issues such as poverty, hunger and regional imbalances that needed to be addressed. He pointed out that India’s Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) is 42.13%, when compared to 60% in the U.S., and that the unemployment rate was high. The economic priorities, if Congress comes to power would be on creating jobs, focusing on health and education and reducing inequality, he said and pointed out that people were complaining about being unable to find good jobs.
He said there were a huge number of vacancies in the central government and thousands of jobs could be created across various sectors, including agriculture, health, agro processing, technicians and technology-related jobs among others.
The Modi government has not listened to the suggestions, he said, hoping that the Congress would get a chance to implement the new set of policies.
