People are more important.

As per government figures GDP grew by 6.9% from April-December as opposed to 8.1% this time last fiscal and the rate of economic growth fell to 6.1%. Worst performing was the manufacturing sector which grew by 0.4% compared to 7.8% for the same period last fiscal. This is bad news for the politicians because less growth means less tax collections to pay for lucrative social schemes to " help " the poor. We are just finishing elections in UP after Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa. Gujarat and Himachal vote later in the year and MP votes next year before general elections in 2014. India is thus in perpetual election mode which means politicians need money to bribe the electorate. Like the Moghuls and the British, winning the throne in Delhi means big riches and they will do anything to grab that. This means that they will not adopt policies which will make the country strong in the long term such as reducing government expenditure by drastic pruning of numbers of ministers and civil servants, reducing crime by freeing up the police and adopting policies to reduce population. Instead there are calls for reducing interest rates which will stimulate the property market, increase black money and jump start inflation. To improve industrial investments, rate of depreciation of machinery may be increased from 15 to 30%. This, it is suggested, will increase investment in newer machines and increase production. The thing is that most machines will be imported so the move will most likely increase balance of payment deficit and since new machines will be more automated productivity will be increased without growth in jobs. Jobless growth is one of the reasons for the slump in developed economies. The government is selling 5% of its stake in ONGC hoping to collect Rs 120 billion. There are hopes of auctioning 4G telecom licenses later this year. Telecom companies paid vast sums for 3G couple of years back and the Supreme Court has cancelled 122 2G licenses leaving some foreign companies extremely peeved. Russian company Sistema is threatening to go to international arbitration. So will anyone bid for 4G? Seems that the government is unable to explain why it suffered losses of Rs 9 billion on import of pulses from 2006 to 2011 when it sold at lower than import price to private companies which then made profits by selling to consumers. Instead of concentrating on people politicians concentrate on generating money for personal gains. Question is how to get rid of the scum.