Kerala CM opposes employment target for states

New Delhi, Dec 9 (UNI) Kerala Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan today rejected as "unacceptable" the move of the Planning Commission to fix employment targets for states during the Eleventh Plan period.

Speaking at the 52nd meeting of the National Development Council to finalise the Approach Paper for the next five year plan, he said this would go contrary to the federal spirit of the Constitution.

"This tantamounts to unilaterally snatching away from the states their entire freedom to make plans of their choice." He said it was restrictive of democracy in a basic sense. In this context, he pointed out that when the electorate of a state chose one government, it meant that the people approved of their development strategy. "If the Planning Commission specifies a set of detailed targets for each state government, then it is negating that choice of the electorate." Mr Achuthanandan said the state governments must have the freedom to work out their own plans if the electoral choice of the people was to be respected.

"When the Planning Commission's own employment target is suspect, to allocate this target across states makes little sense." He said the states merely became exposed to a situation where they would be held responsible for missing targets specified by someone else for them.

Mr Achuthanandan said the concern of the Planning Commission for employment generation was belied by a number of measures from dereservation of items kept for the small-scale sector to FDI in retail trade. "All these will cause significant net employment generation." Mr Achuthanandan expressed his dissatisfaction over the proposal to reduce stamp duty to five per cent from the existing 13.5 per cent (in his state), and said the state would loose to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore on this account every year.

Citing that the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), for some obscure reason, specifies as one of its mandatory reforms a reduction in the stamp duty, he said the proposal would put the states in a "fiscal bind", instead of helping them with a significant addition to their resources.

Mr Achuthanandan opposed the move of the Planning Commission to fix social sector targets for states and privatise the mining sector.

He concluded his speech by expressing skepticism about the Eleventh Plan meeting its basic stated objective of "inclusiveness." "These reservations, however, would not stand in the way of my accepting whatever consensus emerges at this meeting of the NDC," he said.

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