The interview is at http://election.rediff.com/interview/2009/apr/22/loksabhapolls-its-very-important-india-has-a-strong-government.htm. I mostly agree with Sam Pitroda’s views. At the state level, now that Naveen Patnaik has ruled out supporting a Congrees led government, I hope he has enough MPs that he is not ignored by the center and at the same time there are a good number of Congress MPs so that the Congress MPs have a voice as well as a decent representation in the central ministry. A split of 12-13 BJD and 8-9 Congress MPs may work. (Earlier in http://www.orissalinks.com/orissagrowth/archives/2036 I had suggested that more BJD MPs would be good for Orissa. But at that time, my view was BJD giving support to a UPA government in Delhi. Without that support, more Congress MPs would be better for Orissa. Hence the current thought that with a UPA government in Delhi, 12-13 BJD MPs and 8-9 Congress MPs would be good for Orissa.)

Following are some excerpts from the Rediff interview.

Specifically, what’s been so great about the Manmohan Singh government?

Manmohan Singh has done a tremendous job under the circumstances. In the last five years, a lot of new initiatives were taken and the right seeds were planted, whether it has to do with employment guarantee schemes — which is working very well and we need to expand that — or right to education, right to information, nuclear policy — there were a lot of big initiatives.

Now, we need to continue the unfinished agenda. And, we can’t really do all of that if we have a weak government with a lot of conflicting priorities and coalitions. We have learnt that in the last five years.

I give them a lot of credit that we could last for five years. It required a great deal of maneuvering with the various factions of the coalition, for them to continue for five years. So, the first thing, it is very important that the Indian people elect a government that is stable, that looks at the future growth prospects, capitalises on the financial crisis world over and also plays an important role in the global security scenario. 

… The Commission has brought out reports with a slew of recommendations and set forth an agenda.

We have set the agenda and now we need to implement them. And a weak government cannot implement any of these things.

You are convinced that these will be implemented if there is a second term for the Dr Singh government?

It is guaranteed. The prime minister is totally committed to implementing the Knowledge Commission’s recommendations. President Pratibha Patil [Images] just inaugurated the knowledge network to connect all our universities, all our laboratories, all our R&D institutions — to gigabyte bandwidth, broadband network. It is going to cost us $2.3 billion. It is already in the works. That’s going to transform Indian education, Indian R&D. So, we have some very ambitious programmes and Manmohan Singh has planted the seeds and now we need to continue.