File photo: Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal.
Chandigarh, September 1, 2013: Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal today gave a clarion call to Punjabis to join hands and launch a nationwide stir at the national capital to protest against the anti-nation policies of the Congress led UPA government which she said was now trying to blame its policy paralysis on outside factors including the tapering of reserves by the United States and even the Syrian crisis.
In a statement here, the Bathinda mp said the people would see through these excuses adding “how can any so called global crisis be responsible for the government’s own policy paralysis”.
Asserting that the economic downslide under the UPA rule seemed irreversible, she said there was no hope of an improvement under the present dispensation with neither Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh nor Finance Minister P Chidambaram coming out with any road map to take the country out of the present economic crisis. “The PM in fact is on record saying this good monsoon is expected to improve things”, she said adding the only solution left was dismissal of the central government and imposition of financial emergency.
Explaining how the situation had turned bad to worse under UPA rule, Harsimrat Badal said the import of capital goods worth $ 587 billon, which India could have made in its own backyard, drained out a third of India’s GDP under the very nose of the UPA regime. “The country’s current account deficit which was $ 8 billion in 2007 has shot up to $ 90 billion now due to the flawed UPA policies”, she said.
She said the UPA had recently decided to go in for ill planed grandiose schemes instead of going in for nation building. “Would it not have been better if the UPA had sincerely tried to skill the youth of the country a la South Korea which emerged as a country in its own right due to this one singular achievement?, she asked. She said the SAD-BJP on the other hand was concentrating on skill development of youth and women and that more steps would be taken in the forthcoming years to create a skilled force which would be an asset to the state and the country.
Harsimrat Badal said instead of taking policy decisions to reduce the effects of the economic crisis, the government was going in for hefty hikes in the petrol and diesel rates. “This is adding insult to injury”, she said adding the common man, who was already reeling under the economic crisis, would now have to face further inflation.
Recalling Prime Minister’s recent comments in which he claimed that his critics were targeting him for one bad year, the Bathinda MP said "It is not only one year but the last nine and-a-half years which have been bad under Congress rule. Projects worth USD 550 billion have been stalled during the tenure of the UPA”, she added.