NEW DELHI, 28 May 2007 — Even before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ten-point agenda for the industry, reminding them of their responsibility toward the common man (Aam Aadmi), has sunk into the corporate world, senior Congress leaders are engaged in a battle of words over the issue.
Ahead of the concern aired by Manmohan, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Minister for Panchayati Raj, Sports and the North East, had expressed similar stand in an interview to Karan Thapar in CNN-IBN’s program, “Devil’s Advocate.” Blaming Aiyar for having broken the Cabinet’s principle of collective responsibility, by having aired his view, Tourism Minister Ambika Soni told Thapar in yesterday’s “Devil’s Advocate”: “There may be a debate within the Cabinet, there may be discussions on issues like the one Mani raised, with the Prime Minister and the concerned minister (but) you’ve got to fight it out there... And if a fight has taken place, if a discussion has taken place, you are not supposed to speak about it outside. If we don’t follow this mantra of Cabinet collective responsibility, I don’t think any government can function.”
Dismissing suggestions that Manmohan’s ten-point agenda was guided by successive poll reverses faced by Congress and/or under pressure from the left bloc, Soni said: “I don’t think this is election-oriented... The government doesn’t decide its policies, its steps and its time schedules only by looking at election results. And certainly not under the pressure of the Left Front.” However, the uneasy battle of words begun within the cabinet colleagues suggests that internal pressure is going public. This also demands deliberation on whether Soni has the right to decide Aiyar’s “prerogative” on what should he say in open.
While addressing the annual gathering of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), last week, Manmohan sent a strong message calling on the corporate sector to share their benefits with the less privileged. A similar stand had earlier been taken by Aiyar, who said: “If we are framing an economic policy for a democratic polity, as we have to, then we must resist the tendency to look at the interest of the classes and instead take into account the interest of the masses... Actually, we ought to be all the time conscious of the demands of the masses.” Aiyar explained: “There’s a disproportionate benefit of the 9.2 percent (growth) going to the classes. What I want to emphasize is not that there’s no benefit going to the masses but that it need to be much more consciously directed there.” Aiyar also pointed out that unless the government pays attention to “Aam Aadmi,” it might not get his support. “I fear that a government that is attempting to have an economic policy for the ‘Aam Aadmi’ may not get the Aam Aadmi’s endorsement... It’s our job to understand this at the midpoint, because that's where we are, and to take course correction. And it’s the job of any responsible cabinet minister to not only take into account what the (government’s) achievements are but also what further needs to be done,” Aiyar said.
In Soni’s opinion, while it was appropriate for the Prime Minister to have made remarks, drawing attention to the common Indian, Aiyar did not have this “prerogative.” Soni said yesterday. “You know, a cabinet minister is not the Prime Minister... That’s the Prime Minister's prerogative... I believe there is a certain propriety which one does follow when one is a member of the cabinet.”
