DEVELOPMENT DIGEST

VOL.2 1-31 JANUARY 2000 NO.10

The Constitution of India came into force on 26 January 1950. As we celebrate 50 years of our constitution here are some features of the constitution

• The Constitution of India is the longest written constitution in the world.
• The Constituent Assembly took three years to frame the Constitution, ending November 26,1949.
• The Constitution has been drawn from British, American, Irish and Canadian sources.
• In the past 50 years, the Constitution has been amended 78 times.
• The first amendment in 1951 was necessitated by need for zamindari abolition.
• The Constitution’s biggest challenge came during the Emergency, 1975-77.
• It was in this period that the terms "secular" and "socialist" were introduced to describe the republic.
• The 26-odd Directive Principles fulfil the egalitarian dreams of the founding fathers.

India’s economy is liberalising and globalising at a fast pace. Some of the achievements among others in the last 50 years are:-

• Reduction in the number of people living below the poverty line.
• The quality of life has recorded significant improvements. The death rate per 1000 declined from 27.4 for the decade ended 1950 to 8.9 in 1996-97.

• 95% of India’s highways are of two lanes or less. Since Independence, road length has grown eightfold.
• India spends Rs 60,000 crore every year on infrastructure.
• There has been an eighty-eight-fold increase in power generation from

• Production of finished steel touched 24.3 million tonnes in 1998-99.
• The total output of foodgrains as compared to 50.8 million tonnes in 1950-51 reached 202.5 million tonnes in 1998-99. This is almost a four-fold increase.
• There has been over twenty-six times increase in the export value in dollar terms form US$ 1,269 million in 1950-51 to US$ 33,641 million in 1998-99.

The Government completes 100 days on 20 January, 2000. Some of the noteworthy achievements are as follows.

• Sustained double-digit positive export growth rate has been achieved since October 1999. While export growth rate in dollar terms was 20.80 per cent in October 99, it was 30.72 per cent in November 99, the highest ever monthly growth rate in the past few years.
• India participated effectively in the deliberations of the 43^rd Ministerial Conference of World Trade Organisation

• Time frame for consideration of FDI proposals has been reduced from 6 weeks to 30 days.
• To bridge the gap between FDI approvals and inflows the Foreign Investment Implementation Authority (FIIA) has recently been set up as an institution to provide foreign investors with a single-point interface with various approval authorities at the Centre and the State. This would compress the approval time frame and thereby facilitate speedy implementation of projects. The FIIA would also function as a feedback mechanism for appropriate policy intervention both at Central and State level.
• Trade Marks Bill, 1999 and Geographical Indicators Bill, 1999 passed by Parliament and notified.

The President’s address to Parliament and the Prime Minister’s address to the 72^nd Annual Session of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) outlines the Government’s commitment for rapid expansion and improvement of communication services. In this context, keeping in view the need for urgent resolution of subsisting problems in the telecom sector and to expeditiously implement the New Telecom Policy 1999 (NTP)-99) a group on telecom and IT convergence headed by the Finance Minster has been constituted.

• Availability of affordable communication.
• Universal service to uncovered areas including rural, hilly, remote and tribal.
• To create efficient communication infrastructure taking into account the convergence to propel India to IT

super power.

• To set up public Tele Information Centres having multi-media capability.
• To provide, in a time bound manner, greater competitive environment and level playing field.
• To strengthen R&D
• To achieve efficiency and transparency in spectrum management.
• To protect defence and security interest.
• To enable Indian companies to be global players.
• To make available telephone on demand by 2002 and sustain it to reach tele-density of 7 by 2005 and 15 2010.
• To encourage rural communication by making it more affordable by suitable tariff structure and making it mandatory for fixed service providers.
• To increase rural tele-density to 4 by 2010.
• To achieve coverage of all village by 2002.
• To provide Internet access to all district Hqs. by 2000.
• To provide high-speed data connection including ISDN to all towns with population greater than 2 lakh by year 2002.
• As a first step towards corporatisation of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the Government has, in a notification issued on 15 October 1999 separated the policy-making function of the department separated from service, by creating a new body – Department of Telecom Services (DTS).
• Telecom Commission has approved the use of foreign satellites by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) consequent to the finalisation of modalities and operational requirements in consultation with the Department of Space and the Ministry of Information Technology. With this Government expects a major boost to the growth of Internet in the country.

The new Government has reaffirmed its commitment towards the second generation of economic reforms broadening and deepening the ongoing economic reforms process. The Government also indicated its intention to

 focus on social equity and employment generation during this phase .

• Despite the Kargil crisis and Orissa cyclone, the inherent strength and resilience in the economy helped in stepping up the growth rate, bringing down the inflation rate and maintaining a comfortable foreign exchange reserve. While the GDP growth rate reached 6 per cent in the third quarter of the fiscal, there was a complete turnaround on the export front, which recorded an increase of 10 per cent during the third quarter of 1999. The 6.9 per cent growth in index of industrial production (IIP) was higher compared with the 3.4 per cent achieved during April – October 1998.
• The major achievements during the first 100 days are the passing of IRDA Bill, FEMA Bill and Securities Laws Bill, which form part of the second-generation reforms. The IRDA Bill will allow private entry in Insurance sector and confirm statutory status on the insurance regulator. The FEMA Bill will facilitate external trade and payments and promote orderly development and maintenance of forex markets. As options and futures market fulfills the need for hedging against market risk in a cost-efficient way by strengthening and deepening the cash market. So to facilitate this, the Securities Law (Amendment) Bill, 1999 was passed to incorporate derivative instruments into definition of securities in the Securities Contract (Regulations) Act, 1956. Steps were also taken to promote de-materialisation of stock in order to bring in greater efficiency transparency and lower cost and to serve the interest of the small investors.
• The annual rate of inflation based on whole price index was brought down to a record low of 2 per cent as a result of stringent price control and anti-hoarding measures.
• Government allows the Indian companies to freely access the American Depository Receipt (ADR)/Global Depository Receipt (GDR) market through an automatic route without the prior approval of the Ministry of Finance.

• Draft Health Policy placed before Union Cabinet.
• Prevented epidemic in the cyclone hit Orissa.
• World Bank has been approached for disease surveillance systems for the entire country.
• The second phase of National AIDS Control Programmes has been launched with an outlay Rs. 1425 crore.
• Directly of observed treatment for TB extended to 102 districts.
• Draft legislation to regulate use of Tobacco placed before Union Cabinet.
• Modified Leprosy Elimination Campaign has been expanded in the entire country.
• Thrust Intra-ocular lens surgery introduced under National Blindness Control Programme.
• Setting pace for polio-free India by Pulse Polio Immunisation Campaign by the year 2000.

• In order to improve Local Radio Services and widen choice, the Government had decided to open FM Radio Broadcasting to private sector in 40 selected cities in the country. The process of selection of the private parties for this purpose has been initiated and it is expected that the licenses will be granted in the year 2000-2001.
• From the New Year, five digital channels of Doordarshan went round-the-clock. These are Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Bangla. From the Republic Day, a new-look channel in Kashmiri language ‘Kashir’ and an educational channel ‘Gyan Darshan’ will be launched. Doordarshan is also in the process of optimising its signal-availability abroad. Its overseas channel – DD India – has contracted an American DTH platform to distribute its signal to an estimated 1,25,000 TV-homes in the United States, apart from those in Canada and parts of the Caribbean.

The Ministry itself was created within the first 100 days of the new Government. The new Ministry has been carved out by