Advani advocates consensus on labour reforms

Seeking a political consensus on labour reforms, Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani said on Tuesday that education, health and national security would have to be given enhanced priority to meet growing economic challenges.

"Areas of education and health had perhaps been neglected. Along with these greater stress has to be put on national security to enable the country to measure up to the progress made by the rest of the world," he said after noted economist and Andhra Pradesh Governor C Rangarajan delivered the 15th Intelligence Bureau Centenary Endowment Lecture on 'Lessons from Economic Reforms' in New Delhi.

Agreeing with an analysis made by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen in one of his books on Indian economic scenario, Advani said the tendency to pick on one area only would not resolve the country's problems in the age of liberalisation.

"This has to be done imaginatively, more firmly and with determination and ingenuity," he said, observing that the political leadership at the Centre and the States should sit together on the issue of labour laws to examine their feasibility.

"We propose to pursue this," Advani said maintaining the country's political complexion had changed as the Centre and the state governments were ruled by different parties.

Advani recalled in a lighter vein a 1990 editorial in Russian daily Pravda, which had stated that Indian economy had not prospered the way it should have because it had emulated the Russian model.