Punjab Post Daily Online Newspaper & Print Media
Harjap Singh Aujla
New York: June 17, 2015
A reception was held in honor of Mr. Arun Jaitley Union Minister of Finance and Information and Broadcasting Government of India on the evening of Wednesday June 17, 2015 in the Five Star Banquet Hall in Long Island City section of Queens Borough of New York City. Addressing a packed house, Mr. Jaitley predicted that under the dynamic leadership of Shri Narendra Modi, India is poised to overtake China in economic growth.
He said that long gone are the days of India’s anemic economic growth rate of 2.0%, which was prevalent from the independence in 1947 up to the beginning of nineties. It was called the Hindu rate of growth. He claimed that the economy started sprinting from 1991 onwards, when it was opened up to foreign investment and during the period of the premiership of Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the economy grew at a rate exceeding 7%. Then came a period of halting growth. We had a prime minister with no power. For the Indian democratic governance, it was a big shocker. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi tried to redistribute wealth without bothering to generate additional real growth. As a result India’s economic growth rate dipped to a disappointing 4.5%.
Now at a time when the Russian currency the Ruble is rapidly losing value, when the Brazilian economy is slowing down and China is struggling to maintain a growth rate of 7%, India under Narendra Modi is growing at 7.3%, the most impressive growth rate in the entire world. He said Narendra Modi’s rise is a phenomenon in itself. The caste based parties like the Samajvadi Party were crushed badly. They could manage to win only five seats in UP. The other caste based party the Bahujan Samaj Party could not open its account. Both JDU and RJD were seriously mauled in their own den of Bihar. The biggest family oriented party the Congress could not win enough seats to be recognized as the official opposition party. After decades of crippling minority governments, Narendra Modi gave the BJP a resounding absolute majority. Under the prevailing stable conditions, India’s economy is poised to grow at even double digit rate of growth. Jaitley remarked that India’s current highest slab of corporate tax rate of 25% is the lowest in the world. It will spur foreign investment in India. The function was arranged by the “Friends of BJP in the Tri-State area”.
To a question from this reporter, while Mr. Jaitley was leaving the jam-packed banquet hall, he responded that the project of All India Radio in Amritsar will not be further delayed, it will be commissioned within a few months.
Harjap Singh Aujla
harjapaujla@gmail.com
