{Arun Jaitley**}
Dr. Sanjay Baru’s book ‘The Accidental Prime Minister’ only confirms what the country ordinarily suspected. The Prime Minister has to take most of its decisions approved and ratified from the Congress President. All sensitive subjects have to be discussed with the person outside the government. The appointments of key officials would be regulated by 10 Janpath. Contracts such as the coal blocks allocations were allotted by the party. Even the venue for the funeral of former Prime Minister P.V.Narsimha Rao was decided on collateral considerations rather than the based on desire of the family.
In a parliamentary democracy, the party system is an essential requirement. However, the accountability in democracy is of the elected representatives and not of the party office-bearers. It is the Prime Minister and his council of Ministers, which, through the parliament are accountable to the people. Amongst various institutions which have been dwarfed in the UPA regime, the principal one was the office of the Prime Minister itself. Dr. Baru’s book confirms this. Prime Ministers are known not by the number of years they have spent in office, but by the footprints they leave behind. The Prime Ministership is not an employment. It is public service and an exercise by which the leadership is provided to the people. On the eve of relinquishing the office, Dr. Manmohan Singh must seriously introspect as to how his tenure impacted on the institution of Prime Minister. Did he have the last word on all subjects? Or is it the system of the original Communist states that was operating, where the party General Secretary was always more important than the Head of the Government.
The Facebook Meet in Town Hall : Yesterday, the social media site Facebook organized a ‘Town Hall’ meet between me and the youth of Amritsar. The questions in the meet reflected upon the thought process of the youth of Amritsar.
There is wide spread acceptability of my vision document, particularly in relation to declaration of Amritsar as the major tourism town, improving of the infrastructure and opening up of border trade. There are three other issues of great concern which were voiced there. In the absence of the manufacturing sector expanding in the country, there are no jobs. The region has not grown as an IT hub, the drugs menace continues to grow unabated. I do believe there must be extensive skilled development programme. Language training programme, where youngsters, particularly rural youngsters, must be trained in multiple languages so that they qualify to become IT personnel. I have already written extensively on the drug menace. It will be a priority for NDA government to make India into a low cost manufacturing hub. It is only then that the manufacturing sector will expand and many more jobs in the sector will be created.
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**Arun Jaitley
*Disclaimer: The writer is Leader of Opposition Rajya Sabha and the views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of INVC.
