New Delhi: On placatory mechanisms, on appeasement, which is often known as freebies, this House needs to deliberate because the country grows only with capex being available. The electoral process is such that these have become electoral allurements and thereafter the governments that came in the saddle found themselves very uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that they wanted to revisit their thoughts, Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar has said.
“There is an urgent need for a national policy so that all investments of the government in any form are used in a structured manner for a larger good,” he said.
Our constitution provided for Legislature, MPs, and MLAs, but did not have a uniform mechanism. So you will find legislatures in several states give perks and salaries to members of the assembly, much beyond members of Parliament, and even the pension variation for a former member of the assembly is on a scale of 1 to 10.
If in one state, one is getting one rupee, in the other state the pension will be 10 times, and therefore, since these are the issues where legislation can deal with the issue and it will help the politician, it will help the government, it will help the executive and it will also ensure high quality of investment, he added.
Subsidies, if required in areas like the farm sector, should be direct, and that is the practise in developed countries. I checked with the U.S. mechanism. The US has 1/5th of farm households as our country but average income of U.S. farm household is more than the general income of a US household, and that is because the subsidy to the farmer is direct, transparent, without an intermediary.
“Hon’ble members, I am reminded of Constituent Assembly debates where one of the distinguished members, Mr Sidhwa, he was reflecting on the power of Parliament to remove the judges. And he said, it is very good to erogate power without examining other elements. But trust me, he reflected, the number of judges will grow, we will not be able to fructify even one,” he added.
