Hope West Bengal CM attends Niti Aayog meet: Rajiv Kumar

At the Governing Council’s meeting, various issues regarding the country’s development will be discussed. Banerjee conveyed her decision not to attend the meeting in a letter written to the PM.

“Given the fact that the NITI Aayog has no financial powers and the power to support state plans it is fruitless for me to attend the meeting of a body that is bereft of any financial powers,” Banerjee wrote. The Council, the apex body of NITI Aayog, includes all chief ministers, lieutenant governors of union territories, several union ministers and senior government officials. This will be the first Governing Council meeting of the PM Modi-led NDA government, which took charge on May 30. The Council’s meeting comes in the backdrop of the Indian economy growing at a much-lower-than-expected rate of 5.8 per cent in January-March quarter, its lowest level in five years.

When asked about high unemployment, Kumar said it is linked to growth and added that informal sector has created a lot of jobs which has not been captured in the data. He said India needs 8 per cent growth over three decades to meet aspirations of the people.

While growth fell to a five-year low of 5.8 per cent, unemployment rate rose to 45 year high of 6.1 per cent in 2017-18.

“We need to reverse the decline in growth. You will see in the Budget that the government will make use of whatever fiscal space it has,” he said.

He added that the government will make sure that private investment revives, which is key to push growth and “we should clock at least 7.5 to 8 per cent growth in the next five years”. Kumar said the government is planning to pursue labour market reforms but these will not focus on “hire and fire”.

“You will see action very soon. But you have to see action not in terms of hire and fire. You have to have labour reforms where labour gets his due and rightful participation but yet investors get the flexibility to be able to change its composition of labour force. We will action in the coming Parliament session,” he said.

Development should become a mass movement and the State and private sector can come together to use the large inventory of land that has already been acquired and is lying unused for industrialisation, he said.

In the health sector, so far 37 lakh people have benefited from the Centre’s ambitious Ayushman Bharat programme and the scheme could be extended to the rest of the population on the basis of voluntary payments to provide access to quality and affordable healthcare for all, he said.