The Hindu : Digvijay refutes points raised by Jaitley

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Thursday, Jun 05, 2003

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Digvijay refutes points raised by Jaitley

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JUNE 4. The war of words between the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Digvijay Singh, and the Union Law, Justice and Commerce Minister, Arun Jaitley, continued today with Mr. Singh refuting most of the points raised by Mr. Jaitley in his letter dated May 23.

Mr. Singh, in his latest missive, has basically picked holes in Mr. Jaitley's case about the lack of development in Madhya Pradesh for which he quoted various reports, including the one prepared by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and an analysis prepared for the Confederation of Indian Industry, a Planning Commission report on the National Human Development Report-2001 and an UNDP report titled "India: The Road to Human Development.''

On the UNDP report, Mr. Singh has written to Mr. Jaitley that "your letter was silent on the date of the document, which was 1997. Your letter is silent on the data sources on which the calculation was arrived at by the UNDP given at the end of the document itself. It cites 1991 census for computing literacy rates, for life expectancy, the provisional estimates of 1981-86 and quick estimates of 1989-93, for State-wise net domestic product at factor cost 1980-81, 90-91 and 94-95. There is not a single data source that is post 1995. Quite understandably so, for a report of 1997.''

On the Planning Commission's National Human Development Report-2001 quoted by Mr. Jaitley, Mr. Singh says the report was prepared in March 2002 and "here again, the report could only use the available preliminary date of census 2001 and for the rest had to base itself on earlier data. However, the report clearly shows that the position of Madhya Pradesh has been steadily improving.''

Mr. Singh has also taken exception to Mr. Jaitley "ignoring'' the latest combined document of the Planning Commission and UNDP (2002) on `Successful Governance Initiatives and Best Practices: Experiences from Indian States.'

According to Mr. Singh, this report identifies 20 best governance practices from all the Indian States and the largest numbers of four out of 20 are from Madhya Pradesh. Mr. Singh further states that "I hate to be immodest but since you are debating governance in Madhya Pradesh, let me also add that our governance efforts have won us three international awards and one national award....''

Mr. Singh also pointed out that Madhya Pradesh had a 20 per cent jump in literacy to catch up with the national average and reach 64 per cent; female literacy at around 20 per cent was higher than the national average of 14 per cent.

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