Involve private sector for modernising India — Vajpayee

The Prime Minister said that the Centre was keen to involve private entrepreneurs in modernising India’s infrastructure. What India needed was a strategy of partnership, which put all the available financial and human resources to optimal use in the service of the nation.

The traditional method of mobilising governmental resources for infrastructure development could not meet the needs of the time. The view that the entire responsibility for infrastructure development would be exclusively that of the government, was now changing. The old dividing line between the public sector and private sector was not entirely relevant now, since the two intermeshed with each other in many ways.

He said the government placed a lot of emphasis on the speedy development of India’s infrastructure, including the port sector. Major ports at strategic locations had played a key role in increasing India’s trade. With industrialisation, the demand had arisen for more and better ports, which were vital interface between ocean going trade and the developmental needs of the hinterland. Strengthening and modernising this interface was crucial for sustaining India’s bourgeoning trade and the rising expectations of the people.

The fruits of economic reforms were now becoming increasingly visible. India was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. “We are determined to further accelerate the growth rate and take it to nine per cent and more on a sustainable basis. That alone will enable us to make a quick and perceptible dent in poverty and unemployment and raise the living standards of the one billion citizens of India. We are committed to achieve not only faster growth, but such growth as will remove regional and social imbalances,” he said.

Vajpayee assured the people of Tamil Nadu that the NDA’s promise of early completion of Sethu Samudram project would be kept. He would also speedily revive Kolechal Port, which was another longstanding demand of the people of the State.

Presiding over the function, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi said that Tamil Nadu was the only state in India to have three major ports.

Since the commissioning of the Ennore Port, the CM said that the mouth of the Ennore creek was clogged continuously. The Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB) had been periodically dredging that area. But the sand-casting was rapid and it was becoming more and more difficult to keep the mouth open.

This affected the availability of cooling water to North Chennai and the Ennore Thermal Power Stations. Moreover, the fishermen found it difficult to go to the sea through the creek. Construction of groynes on both sides of the creek would alone solve the problem, he said and appealed to the Union Surface Transport ministry to take up the work immediately.