India Inc looks on as PM makes a political pitch

Vajpayee’s speech today was meant for the front-benchers and drew applause from his audience, especially his digs at the Congress president. And there were several potshots at the CII, the largest industry association, for its invitation to the Opposition leader to inaugurate the conference instead of the norm of inviting the PM. ‘‘It does not make business sense to count one’s chickens before they are hatched,’’ Vajpayee said.

Obviously rattled by the PM’s sharp remarks on the controversy over Sonia inaugurating its annual session, CII’s outgoing president Sanjiv Goenka tried to allay rising temperatures, saying ‘‘there was no inaugural session of the conference,’’ and that the present conference was similar to the one in December where the PM had made an appearance in the concluding session. But his attempts were, at best, feeble.

Reiterating that his government was stable and would serve its full term, Vajpayee said: ‘‘Destabilizing governments have neither helped the cause of business, nor have they done any good to our democracy.’’

In a speech that had more politics than business, he dwelt on Gujarat at great length, calling it a ‘‘blot on India’’. But he made the point that there were atrocities in Godhra and then ‘‘elsewhere’’ in Gujarat. ‘‘Let no one belittle the crime that has been perpetrated in Gujarat — either in Godhra or elsewhere.’’

Vajpayee also attacked Sonia Gandhi for her remarks on Gujarat and secularism and almost blamed the Opposition for its ‘‘shrill and divisive campaign’’ which ‘‘encourages outsiders to start giving us sermons’’.

It was after half his speech was over — in which he dwelt on Sonia, Gujarat and the upsetting of protocol by CII — that Vajpayee finally turned to economic issues. And here, after rollbacks from Yashwant Sinha were formalised yesterday, there were warm words for the Finance Minister who has been at the receiving end of a lot of stick from his own partymen, leave alone BJP allies and the opposition. Vajpayee said, ‘‘Believe in India, believe also in our Finance Minister.’’

He sought to assure the industry captains that the government would give a new thrust to reforms to achieve a ‘big ticket’ growth of 7-8 per cent per annum.

In the past half century, a sustainable 8 per cent GDP growth seemed in the realm of fantasy, he said adding ‘‘but now we are getting close to it. I have no doubt that India will cross the milestone in the Tenth plan that has just started.’’

But the PM refrained from making any major policy announcements using the excuse of Parliament being in session. He however said that the government had embarked on a major review of the system of all the policies and programmes to remove the shortcomings that have been plaguing the economy for several decades.