Economic liberalisation did not help poor: Narayana Murthy

Bangalore, Aug 12 (UNI) IT bellwether Infosys Chairman N R Narayana Murthy today opined that economic liberalisation had not helped the poor and needy in the country in any manner.

''Economic liberalisation has helped people buy whatever they want that is produced in the world. But what is the big deal if it cannot help the poor. The advantages of this process has proved to be useless to the predominantly poor people in our country,'' he lamented.

Speaking at a book release function here, Mr Murthy said unless the government addresses the basic needs of the downtrodden, like healthcare, primary education and nutrition, the opening up of markets make no sense.

He said the country could not claim its reforms were successful unless it threw open the primary and secondary education to private players. ''If you want to open an English medium school you need permission of the government. So it is, if one wants to open a university which can give world standard education to the young.

Government wants to run the education institutions which had led to virtually no improvement in the standard of education. How can we claim the success of liberalisation unless we give good education to our children ?'' he said.

He said there was no need for the government to put its foot in when it came to education, mainly primary and secondary education.

''You should hand over the control of the schools to the parents,'' he added.

Stating that there was no accountability in the bureaucracy in this country, he said, ''It took 89 days to start a business. This should be the last thing to happen when economic reforms is making the country a powerful market in the world. This was because of the reforms which had shifted the focus from producers to consumers. But why shouldn't we let all people, including the poor, reap the benefit?'' Mr Murthy said.

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