New Delhi:
The Planning Commission has just got its twelfth five-year plan cleared by the Cabinet. The government has also just announced a second wave of big bang reforms. This week on
Your Call, NDTV's Sonia Singh talks to Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, and the person seen at the heart of the government's current reforms.
Here's the full transcript of the interview:NDTV: Good evening and welcome to Your Call. Joining me tonight is the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, someone who has just got his 12th five-year plan cleared by the Cabinet. Also someone who is seen at the heart of the government's current reform, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, thank you for joining me tonight. It's an interesting time to be heading the Planning Commission and to be in the government, when the wave or the second wave of big bang reforms has just been announced. What's interesting however is that many ask is this more about window shopping, in a sense, because these reforms, unlike the last ones, have to be passed by Parliament and the UPA 2 is in a minority as such at the moment?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Well any legislative action has to be passed by the Parliament and Parliament is supreme in this matter. I think the important signal that has been given is that these bills are now ready to go back to Parliament. In some important areas like for example FDI in insurance, the Standing Committee of Parliament had recommended against taking it to 49%. What the government is doing is that particular recommendation is not being accepted. I think people should understand that Standing Committee recommendations don't have to be accepted, and if you look at the last 25 Standing Committee reports you will see that some recommendations get accepted, some don't get accepted. So what the government is doing is saying that look, we think 49% is important, I think that they made a very good case that there should be no worry on 49% at all, and we are going back to Parliament and it depends that, whether Parliament passes it or not. I hope they will.
NDTV: Really the key to passing both these reforms or both these liberalisation Bills will be the BJP, and as somebody, what is the economic advice in the NDA government, and the BJP and Congress economy, especially their politics on that is comparable, at least the Left has already charged them of being virtually the same, except for the fact that they are different political parties. Are you hopeful that the BJP will be one supporter? They have already said that we will study the fine print before taking the final call.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Well I would welcome any party supporting the position that the government has taken, I think if the BJP rethinks the position that they took in the Standing Committee and decides to support these Bills, I think it will be a very positive signal, because you know, everybody understands in politics it's the job of the Opposition to oppose. But there is a certain point in which you can move and allow things to move forward and let's hope that they look at it that way
NDTV: Though of course that there are various things that say the experience haven't been good but ...
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: I will make a point on there are ...
NDTV: ... one represented by Mr Scindia in the House.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: There are innumerable studies, most of these studies are of the Wal-Mart and actually Wal-Mart is an extraordinary example of a company that began like a small kirana store really, and became a retail giant. Lot of the studies criticise Wal-Mart. They, according to the American study, they don't give labour the full protection that has been, these are issues, regulatory issues I mean. I am not in favour of anybody coming here and not observing labour laws etc. We should police that. I don't believe that says there are any serious study that says roll back hyper-markets, because it's not just Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart is just one company, I think these studies are being exaggerated. The other thing that has to be remembered, in many societies overwhelmingly the evidence is as change occurs, I mean modern retail flourishes along with traditional retail, and in very rich countries you actually get a flip back into the smaller retailer. But what does happen is that the smaller retailer upgrades himself. So I mean you have got a smaller retailer, who has got an air conditioned shop, then another the smaller retailer also air conditions his shop, and frankly the Delhi examples shows that the number of malls have increased, but so have the number of retail shops, so there is simply no credible evidence on this in my view.
NDTV: But you are saying don't be Wal-Mart specific, but you are saying the Wal-Mart is the main company that joint ventured already in India, and they seem to be the main, who are in front of the queue to come in. The other ones are much more cautious.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: There is Wal-Mart, there is Tesco and once you open up I should make one point, by the way, everybody is thinking of opening up. Simply allowing companies that actually will control the thing opening up. The opening up also allows the Indian retailers to bring in passive foreign investment. So if Pantaloon's Biyani have more, something, whatever these retail shop that has opened up want to increase their own capital, this policy allows them to bring in private investment; and quite frankly if 20 years from now, in my view, Indian retail should have a brand name internationally. There is no reason why we cannot be leading retailers, or one or two of us be the leading retailers operating in Asia. I don't believe we can do that if our companies are seen as incapable of competing. So I think this an unreasonable fear. I think it is being whipped up for political purposes, people are being misled and I hope not too many people will be misled.
NDTV: When you talk about unreasonable fears, we have seen again the explosion of nationalistic sentiments yesterday. The country is on sale, the people are saying while we just mortgaged the government, we are mortgaging everything else for foreign interest, I have KD Singh of the Trinamool to ask about another sensitive issue on pension. Let's just hear what Mr.Singh says.
KD Singh: The question, which I want to ask you Sir is, in my opinion, you are the instrumental person and you are the brain behind proposing 26% equity in pension funds. My question to you is Sir, that as per the data available with me in 2008 meltdown OECD countries lost a whopping 5.4 trillion dollars; their pension funds lost 5.4 trillion dollars. One more example I will give you, New York State's fund, it's a pension fund of New York State, lost 40 billion dollars, the pension fund of New York State. Now do you think that such risk coming into our country by opening up the pension sector, or you think our country can handle such risks?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Very good question, I mean there is some confusion here that who runs the pension fund, and how the stock market is regulated. The losses that the pension fund abroad suffer, is not because they were run by foreign pension, they were not foreign actually, they are domestic. In their own country, even because the financial crisis reflected very fundamental fragility, which was built into the financial system, which led to a stock market bubble and that happened because financial liberalisation in the West, regulatory liberalisation had not been accompanied by good regulatory activities. So whether you lose money or not depends on whether you invest in stocks, and what happens to stock that will happen, whether you have 26% foreign investment in the pension fund or the pension fund is 100% Indian. I have absolutely no doubt what so ever that for pension funds to work properly, we need a well-regulated financial system. I am not suggesting for one minute that we are opening up the financial system, although even they have, quite frankly we are much more regulated perhaps than most other countries are
NDTV: But when we look at a global model, as I pointed out, and again when we actually held up our regulatory system, and at one time your national opponent the Left has actually made the point that if we weren't in UPA 1, the UPA 1 would have opened much more and we would have been hit much harder by the financial crisis. In the global model isn't it everyone urging much more regulation at a time India is opening up.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: By the way, I think it's a very important question that you asked. Countries are sort of ranged along an entire spectrum and I think part of the world was in the most liberal, least regulated end. We were much more regulated. Most countries and most countries are actually in between. At the extreme end of liberalization, people are now beginning to realise that their regulatory standards were not good enough, and they should tighten, so they are moving a little towards the middle. We are still very far from middle on the other side and there are many instruments that we do not actually allow easy access to. So I feel that first of all we were right to open up gradually, and I think the current view internationally, is that developing countries should not be forced to open up. So that is very clear. Gradual liberalisation is good. My only point is we should keep it gradual. There is no case in my view, absolutely no case, for India to reverse what we have done, because what we have done is actually very small. I would also go further and say that there is a case for us to continue this process. We are very far from anything like a truly open capital account that we have to start worrying about these things.
NDTV: We will have more on that Sir, but let's go across now to IIM Calcutta where again we have got some young people with questions, go ahead
Hari: My name is Hari. During the 11th five-year Plan India said a growth rate of 9% and achieved 7.9%. In the 12th five-year Plan India has set a target of 8.2%. Why do you think India will be able to achieve this growth rate?
Vivek: Hi I am Vivek and my question is, every year in our Budget non-planned expenditures are higher than the planned expenditure like for this year. Also last year's Budget planned expenditure was somewhere around 5.2 lakh crore, which was 18% increase from the previous year, while the non-planned expenditure was around 19.7 lakh crore, and the increase was 8.5%, something around that. Even if you say year-on-year increase percent is increasing in non-planned expenditure is far less, but the base is so huge, but the overall amount is somewhat similar. Is this a right way of going and is this the right way of going and what's the Planning Commission role? Don't you think it's getting defied by increasing non-planned expenditure and this time that you need to have some fund for that, but then such a huge difference, is it really required?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: I think the factual position is that the economy has been gradually accelerating. In the 10th Plan we achieved 7.6%. In the 11th Plan we achieved 7.9%. In the 12th Plan we originally thought we would aim at 9%, but recognizing that the global situation is very difficult, we lowered the target to 8.2%. Will we achieve 8.2? I think the Plan brings out very clearly that this is not an astrological prediction. This is like saying if you do all the things that are there in the Plan. We can achieve 8.2. It's also not rocket science. When you plot a rocket movement the slightest deviation for it is disaster. Whether we do 8.2, 8 or 8.1 nobody can tell, but I think to say that the Indian economy is being accelerated and in the 10th Plan it did 7.6, in the 11th Plan it did 7.9, to feel that we can't do 8.2 is just defeatism, it doesn't make any sense. Now the last question on non-planned expenditure I want to focus on.
NDTV: And why do we need a Planning Commission if we can't keep non-planned expenditure in place?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: It's not the job of the Planning Commission to keep non-planned expenditure down. I think the job of the Planning Commission is to first of all to pronounce on policies and policies are much more than government programmes. Secondly to make sure that planned programmes are designed well, and by the way, planned programmes are still quite substantial. When the gentleman said non-planned, I mean look, non-planned includes all the expenditure on the military, all the expenditure on the defence and security of the nation; all the expenditure on interest, which is interest paid on debt, which is incurred in the past; all the expenditures on subsidies, which are mounting, many of your students want more subsidy. So it is not the case that non-planned expenditure is completely useless. What is really important is are we doing enough on the planned side? I think that's an issue. Why we are doing quite a bit I wish we could do a bit more, but you know these other expenditures cannot be easily cut. I am not in favors of cutting down India's defence budget. As a percent of GDP amongst the smallest in the world, so I wouldn't cut that down. You can't cut interest because you have incurred the debt already. The only way you can reduce interest expenditure is by reducing fiscal deficit, which of course we are trying to do. You try to reduce the fiscal deficit, in a short time you have to control expenditure. There is no easy solution to this problem.
NDTV: Thanks so much, thank you all for joining me tonight. Let's just look at when we talk of the political divide, there is also an ideological divide often, which is we see two arms of party and government against each other. And there's many in the party who will say that there is a pro reform group which, is of course the PM, Mr Chidambaram and you, and there's another group, much more welfare oriented, that is headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, the NAC. And often these groups are at loggerheads. One issue as such will be the Right to Food Bill?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: I don't believe that there is any contradiction between promoting growth and promoting inclusion. In fact both on the political side and on the pure governmental side one thing has been very clear, it is through a rapid growth that you generate the revenues that enable you to finance some of the inclusiveness schemes. I think the Congress President has spoken of that in her speeches and many others also. Secondly, growth is not something that only happens to the rich. If growth is inclusive, and this is a key issue that's not been recognised enough, if growth is inclusive, the ordinary person benefits, I just mentioned some time ago, that in the last seven or eight years after 2007, you have had three to four times faster increase in real wages of agriculture, that's after taking account of inflation, than we did previously; and in our view that was because the 11th Plan was much more inclusive.
NDTV: Let's just go across to, well we went from IIM, let's go to a university on the other end of the divide, Jawaharlal Nehru University from Delhi, go ahead with your questions for Dr Ahluwalia.
Question: Sir this is about investment, as you recently have increased FDI to 51%, FDI in retail that is, FDI in retail has been increased to 49%, you have opened our country up. Don't you think tieing us into the model of development which is focused on investments from outside, I mean because of this global networks competition with other developing countries labour standards in our country are falling very drastically, the increasing contractualisation has been very bad for women, as women are mostly informal labour, because of that you have noticed, I mean, that this is subverting the struggle for equal pay for equal work also, Sir so what do you have to say about this, which clearly states that one Wal-Mart will displace 1300 retail stores in India, which will unemploy 3900 people? It's being done in the context of unemployment rate given by your own NSS. They are also being done in the context of farmer suicide and in a phenomena of job disgrowth Sir, is the Planning Commission planning to exclude millions?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: On the contrary, for the first time we are committed to inclusive growth and I would recommend to all the JNU students, if they are still watching, they should look at Chapter one of the 12th Plan which has now been cleared and will soon be on the web. We are clearly laying down the multi-dimensional nature of inclusiveness. I mean the young lady who talked about women and the role of women, that's also an important thing. But you know I think this underlying image here seems to be that running a modern economy, integrated globally, is bad for inclusiveness. I think that's wrong, and I will say this with full respect, I think we should ask ourselves a question, that do you believe that globalising India will be good for inclusiveness? I would say absolutely no. Secondly, look at the past record. I have data, for example, of what happened between the year 2004 and 2011, they are using the NSS etc. between 2004 and 2011. The rate of decline in poverty doubled compared to the previous 10 years. The growth rate went up by either 5.9% to about 8.2%, both poverty went down; growth went up, real wages in agriculture have grown three times faster in the period after 2004.
NDTV: Of course we have talked about, and that has been hailed as a remarkable achievement, is the lifting out of poverty, it's been the fastest growth. In that sense, in the last 10 years, when you look at it in terms of actual numbers, given the increase in population as well, it still means that the actual numbers of poor in India are amongst the highest in the world.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Of course there are, I mean look, India is one of the poorest countries in the world. It is like you frequently get these articles, which say we are the second largest number of people with any particular disease, we are the second largest country in the world in terms of population. As a second largest country in the world, in terms of population, we are going to have a large number. The difference is, in the previous 10 years not only has the percentage gone down, the absolute number of poor has gone down, but it's still quite large. In the previous period the percentage has gone down very slowly, and the absolute number actually increased. I think there is still a lot of poverty in India. Anyone who thinks we have lifted the poverty problem is wrong. There is a huge job to be done, but it's a complete mistake to think that economic policy and the opening up of India has been bad, or has produced the worst performance. That is categorically untrue. The performance is actually better than the prior period.
NDTV: Let me go across to some of the opponents of that political line. Mani Shankar Aiyar, your old friend, has a question to ask you.
Mani Shankar Aiyar: Mr Deputy Chairman, your approach paper to the 12th Plan boasts that over the previous five years, the annual average growth of GDP in India has been over 8% per annum, and it confesses a few paragraphs later that over the last 11 years, poverty alleviation in the country has been proceeding at the rate of under 0.8% per annum. Do you think allowing this kind of widening disparity is in the larger Indian national interest, or do you think that faster growth, at least for the foreseeable future, will inevitably lead to the widening inequalities in our society? And if these widening inequalities are inevitable, do you think our democracy, or even the sustainability of our development can be reconciled with an increasingly unjust society?
NDTV: The argument because often Bangladesh has been cited as having better social indicators, despite having a lower growth rate; the African miracle that turned around countries like Rwanda, in that sense what you've been saying Sir, inclusive growth, Mani Shankar Aiyar's point, is this growth is not inclusive?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Well, it's nice to debate with Mani. I used to do that in St.Stephens College almost 50 years ago and I didn't agree with Mani then.
NDTV: He's famously called you Uncle Scrooge.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: He has an amazing capacity to build a very well articulated case, usually on insufficient facts. So the first thing that I want to clarify, Mani's just got the facts wrong. The decline in poverty at 0.7% points per year is what was true between 1993 and 2004. In the period 2004 to 2011 the decline in poverty is 2% points, is more than double the growth rate in the earlier period. Now Mani rightly focused on the approach to the 12th Plan, which was produced a year and a half or 2 years ago, and at that time the latest data for the current period were not available. So my first request to Mani would be, please read Chapter 1 of the 12th Plan and update your figures. So the central notion underlined in Mani's argument, many people have that.
NDTV: Professor Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, also raised exactly these issues.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Prof Amartya Sen does not agree with Mani that this growth has been not inclusive, and that things have got worse. His point is they should've got better faster. Amartya, on record, is saying that poverty has gone down. He feels that on education and health we should do a better job. We completely agree with him. Incidentally, on both education and health, this government, in the case of education in UPA 1, introduced the Right to Education Act, and we rolled out quite an extensive schooling system. How well it functions now is the next challenge, which is not something that the Central government does. It's something that the state governments do.
NDTV: But it's also on record, on cash transfers in the Right to Food Bill, he says the government subsidises the corporates, the rich and doesn't worry and why do they make a farce about subsidising the poor?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: No, my recollection is that Mani, Amartya felt that he was not in support of fuel subsidies. He's not actually against cash transfers. I mean I have discussed this with Prannoy in a programme in St,Stephens College. Well he was open minded, and by the way we are not, what we are saying, let me say what I am saying, because the government has only said that we are going to consider this. The universal experience in Mexico, in Brazil and in Turkey, is that the shift away from this direct physical provision of commodities to cash transfers has been proved to be good for poverty, less leakage and has seen a very, very positive response. Now these are documented changes we should learn from the world. I don't, by the way, think there is lack of evidence in India. I mean Renana Jhabvala and she is a person of unimpeachable integrity in these and other matters. She did a study in Delhi, where they converted, they arranged for people to switch from physical supplies of commodities to equivalent cash transfer, and their conclusion, which is documented, is the beneficiaries on the whole preferred it. Delhi government prefers it. They feel it's easy to avoid leakage, particularly with
Adhaar. Once you've decided that X is somebody you want to give benefit to, now that's an identification issue, but once you've decided that you can make sure that the money goes into an account against their name and
Adhaar number, that cannot be assured if you are distributing commodities.
NDTV: We are nearly at the end of the show and perhaps the controversial part of last year has been the debate over the poverty line. So we actually went to a village in Madhya Pradesh and had somebody look at that experiment. Go ahead.
Questioner: Montek ji namaskar. Mein morena se bol raha hoon. Abhi aapne TV pe jo statement diya, that ki bathis rupay jo aadmi khana khaa raha, woh aadmi gareeb nahi hai. Mein market gaya tha, aur wahaan se jo samagri mein laya hoon woh aapko batata hoon, ke bathis rupay mein jo aata hai, yeh 50 gram daal, ye 100 gram chawal aur yeh 1 rupay ka namak aur 100 gram aata, 9 rupay ka tel aur 1 rupay ki mirchi aur yeh aloo aur pyaaz 100-100 gram aur yeh do tamaatar mein market se leke aaya hoon. Isko dekh ke lagta hai ki aapko hum raheesi khana khaa rahe hain?Abhi aapne petrol ke daam aur diesel ke daam aur subsidy gas pe se hatha di itni mehengaai ho gayi, aam aadmi jaye to jaaye kahaan?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Yeh dekhiye yeh jo keh rahe hain, yeh to hum maante hain ki bathis rupay aaj ke daam pe nahi thi, bathhis rupay kuch do saal ke pehle ki daam thi per person, family ki nahi thi. Ek aadmi, ek vyakti ke liye thi. Usko agar aap family mein convert karde, to on average jo bathis rupay hai, woh kuch 5000 rupay mahine ki consumption
ho jaati hai. Ab kayi log kehte hain ki bhai 5000 rupay bahut kam hai, main maanta hoon ke isiliye hum ne ek nayi committee establish
kari hai. Lekin ek cheez yaad rakhni chahiye, UPA government
jab aayi thi hame kahaa gaya tha jo pehli poverty line
hai woh bahut low
hai,
isliye hum ne Tendulkar Committee establish
ki. Tendulkar Committee
ne us poverty line
ko badha diya. To humne jo kiya hai humne usko badhane ki koshish ki. Ab log keh rahe hai ki yeh kaafi nahi hai aur honi chahiye, to humne Rangarajan Committee establish
ki. Yeh important
baat nahi hai ki hum yeh nahi keh rahe ki khaali bathis rupay honi chahiye. Agar hum kahe ki subsidy 5000 kaafi nahi hai 6000, 7000 per month subsidy milni chahiye sarkar nirnay le sakti hai.
NDTV: Was that a tactical mistake? The argument again that the thinking of the people within the Planning Commission is anti poor, when you even look at LPG cylinders, you say that the non poor are not the people who use LPG cylinders, you actually left out a huge tract of Indians who fall in between Rs 32 or Rs 33, or even if they earn Rs 10,000 a month, Rs 12,000 a month they'd be seen as non poor, but they can't afford the burden of the LPG cylinders being Rs 127 up.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: You see, let me say that the poor, non poor is not a good distinction, because I think if we have a concept of poor then you have a concept of vulnerable. Let's say according to the, I don't know what the Rangarajan poverty line will do, but suppose the Rangarajan Committee raises the poverty level to say 40% or so, I would readily agree that beyond that 40%, maybe 10% or maybe even 15% were kind of vulnerable. Beyond the vulnerable you have the aam aadmi. Now the aam aadmi is not poor, also not vulnerable, but he always has a tight budget to manage. And then you've got the top. Different people will say top 20% or the top 15%. Frankly we can't stop worrying even about them, because after all they worry about the prices of vegetables, the prices of milk, the prices of meat. Bottom line is we ought to bring prices under control. People will be able to afford prices if their incomes rise, have good jobs. You don't solve the problem by trying to introduce price control. Now whenever prices go up, part of the problem with the cylinder business is that we kept it low for such a long time, that people have got used to buying cylinders at a much cheaper rate. They are still getting them at a cheap rate for the 1st 6 cylinders; they are paying a high price for anything above that. Many of those people can afford it, for some it's squeezing the budget. I mean obviously it squeezes the budget. At the margin, had we been increasing these prices by Rs 2, Rs 3 every year, we wouldn't have had this problem. So I think you've got to allow that transition to take place.
NDTV: P Sainath from The Hindu, who has written very strongly against what he calls the austerity, the affluent and targeted you, the government, the foreign trips; you see the foreign trips of ministers have in fact doubled from the last year, and he targeted you, saying that your foreign trips added upto an expenditure of 2.2 lakhs a day. How can you determine the poverty lines and say that Rs 32 is an acceptable, or is the poverty line of India?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: You know I think what P Sainath should have said is that I travel when the government asks me to travel. I don't particularly want to travel. Since I hold an official position and represent the government on many international agencies, I don't think it's right for me to say I don't want to travel because P Sainath won't like it. I travel by the class that the government gets all ministers to travel. I stay in hotels, which are chosen by the government, and the truth of the matter is, if you're going to send teams of people out to New York, it is going to cost a lot. We don't decide what that is and personally I think you cannot have, you cannot have a government, you cannot have an India which is having a bigger position globally etc. People want more Indian representation and all kinds of meetings; then you raise these issues. This travel business is not just limited to me, ministers everybody. I think the country's just got to grow up.
NDTV: Do you think the government or Planning Commission should look at that kind of bloating?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: By the way that is, in my view, somewhat trivial. It may be symbolically important, but the absolute amount of money spent on government travel is very small. It is not Plan expenditure, that's the job of Finance Ministry to do. But I would assure you that I've had some people saying, why do you want to live, why do they put you up in this hotel? If you have an international meeting in a particular hotel, these hotels charge precisely because there's an international meeting. Do you really think it's practical to be in an international meeting and choose some hotel somewhere else in New York? I think it's better not to go to the meeting. That's actually, in my view, a much more viable thing. One thing, it's very easy to, look, poor country and the expenditure on foreign travel would not just shock poor people, it will shock ordinary people. I think it's cheap journalism to throw those kinds of numbers around. Particularly when he's not pointing out that every minister of the government of India, when they travel, that's what it costs. I do nothing that is not part of the rules, and most of this expenditure is not discretionary. I mean it's not like I'm giving parties abroad or any of this kind of stuff. So frankly I think we need to grow up. I mean do you want Indian representation abroad or not? Am perfectly happy not to travel, by the way.
NDTV: Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, final question, you've known of course as being the friend of the Prime Minister's as well, are you happy to see the new avatar of Dr Manmohan Singh, considering the press and media crticism he was facing in the last one year, being termed as an under achiever, there are accusations against him. Are you happy to see the new avatar of Dr Manmohan Singh?
Montek Singh Ahluwalia: Well, I don't know if it's a new avatar, but I'm certainly happy to see the actions taken by, I knew that many of these were in the pipeline, and many of them were being held back because the government wanted to consult. So unlike the press, I was not under the impression that we're doing nothing. I'm glad that we've taken action. I think actually, it's his old avatar, not the new avatar and I think government, as a whole, is conveying a very clear signal. We know the economy has slowed down. We know the economy can do better, we're determined to make it do better, and what you're seeing in the last 3-4 weeks is just a whole series of steps. I hope there'll be more in the coming weeks.
NDTV: Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, thank you very much for joining me tonight.