A meeting at the Gujarat Bhavan, which began with tea and snacks and ended with a Gujarati dinner had deliberations revolved around job creation, sources said. The meeting was attended by union ministers Arun Jaitley, Radha Mohan Singh, Kalraj Mishra and Nirmala Sitharaman besides BJP president Amit Shah and general secretaries Bhupendra Yadav and Muralidhar Rao. RSS joint general secretary Krishna Gopal, the pointsperson for coordination between the BJP and Sangh, was also present at the meeting.
Pope Francis' call for financial reform along ethical lines to turn the economy to benefit all, echoed at the meeting of RSS, government and BJP. The Sangh affiliates said that this is in line with the 'Hindu philosophy' of economic growth. They sought an alternative economic model with a more 'humane' approach, saying the existing one is neither creating employment nor narrowing the rich-poor divide.
RSS wings like Swadeshi Jagran Manch, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh have been critical on some of the economic policies of the Modi government, like opening doors to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
"In business if there is no ethics you cannot sustain the economy. This is what Pope Francis said. Azim Premji (Wipro Chairman) has said that business leaders need to play a role beyond business," said Vrijesh Upadhyay, national secretary of BMS.
"We are of the view that the economic growth model should be wage and job oriented. We want not a capital intensive industry but a labour intensive industry. Capital should not go into hands of few," he said.
He said that the Hindu philosophy of economic growth factored in ethics to ensure that the rich-poor divide did not widen and underlined the need for focusing on rural economy.
BMS was of the view that industry should not be rated by its balance sheet alone, but also by how it has helped in improving quality of life.
Sangh's economic, trade union and farmers' wings had aggressively resisted FDI and other liberalisation policies during the Vajpayee regime. During the Modi regime, there has been a regular coordination mechanism for consultations on various policy-related matters.
By Premji
