Action Points

n order to create the right environment to encourage such development and avoid habitual calls for really unrequired funds the Government needs to stress on the following:

1. Budgeting – All Institutions and Departments asking every year for increased fund allocations to operate, must called upon to apply a ‘Zero-based’ budget process. Allocation should not be based on previous Allocations, except for on-going projects. Starts from ‘Zero’ then justify why each needs what it is asking for today. This will bring better accountability system.

2. Infrastructure – (Across the Board – BOT / BOOT Projects, SEZ’s etc.) Increased public spending on infrastructure projects creating assets that will boost the creation of jobs and also, aggregate demand through a multiplier effect on domestic consumer spending. (See ‘Wealth, Market Economy, Entrepreneurship – The Case for) and on how to ensure both benefits to the girl child of low-income families, together with long term infrastructure funding. (See – Girl Child – Protecting & Improving her lot while also, encouraging Infrastructure Projects’).

3. Education – Pay School, Primary and High School must be encouraged for most effetctive learning School Vouchers, low interest student loans and really effective and nutritious mid-day meal schemes – to be put under local supervision and involve Public – Private Partnerships. (See ‘Education in the 21st Century’). Government Schools should be made competitive to private schools and Government employees, especially Teachers, be mandated to admit their children in them. This will ensure
better facilities and functioning.

4. Universal Health Care – to be linked with Universal Insurance cover offered competitively by multiple Corporations, with a requirement of set limits for FIRST COSTS, to be met by the insured. Nothing should be absolutely free as it would encourage unaffordable misuse. (See ‘Health Care for All’ and ‘Ayushman Bharat’’).

“If you think health care is expensive now, wait till you see what it costs when it’s free.” – P. J. O’Rourke

5. Lay down guidelines for States to declare minimum wages for Rural and Urban and Semi-Urban areas for unskilled / semi-skilled Labour. The rest can bargain for themselves. Reform existing Labour Laws to make it easier for new entrepreneurs and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME’s). Today employees have many employment options and hence, do not need all such protection as they did in the past. We do not need to allow the International Labour Organization, through its Unions, to set policies for us, especially as employment today is more knowledge and white collar oriented and even self-employed, than purely Labour oriented as in old days. Capital availability for entrepreneurs through ‘Mudra’ loans is a right step in this direction.

6. Set out specific programmes for urban development of both Metros and Tier II and Tier III townships, as greater and rapid urbanization is inevitable. (See – ‘Urbanization’)

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