CHAPTER - 30

MOTION OF NO CONFIDENCE IN COUNCIL OF MINISTERS

Lok Sabha , 16 August 1982

EDITORIAL NOTE

No Confidence motion was moved by Chaudhari Charan Singh, Leader of the Janata Party. Y. B. Chavan questioned the purpose of bringing about no confidence motion. He saw no propriety in doing so and attributed the motion to sheer political frustration. According to him such a motion was a serious matter and he referred in that connection to the Motion that he himself moved on 11 July 1979, which brought down Shri Morarji Desai’s Janata Government.

Shri Yashwantrao Chavan (Satara) : Mr. Chairman, Sir, I want to participate in the debate not to discuss any personalities, but policies. I was very glad’ that Choudhary Sahib has discussed certain matters about planning and planning priorities and about the question of poverty as such. I do not know from where he got this information about the Prime Minister saying that there is not poverty. Perhaps he was the first person in India in recent times to start the struggle against poverty. Nobody has said that there is no poverty. Choudhary Saheb gave very sentimental and very, dark picture of picture of poverty. May be in some sections poverty exists today. We do not deny that. It is not possible to claim that we have removed poverty. but we would  certainly like to make a claim  that if for the first time it was the determination of any political party which wanted to commit itself to remove poverty, it was the congress party, and no other political party.

Well, choudhary Sahib is very fond of statistics and he has given some statistics and he has tried to build up a philosophy with which it is very difficult to agree. Well, poverty of course is there. poverty is there, but how this poverty can be removed is certainly a very important question. Can we remove poverty by keeping the society as conventional as it was before. Priority must be given for a griculture. Nobody denies that. And it is not  very correct to say that Pandit Jawaharlalji only though of  agriculture in 1963. I mean,  that it is something very wrong. I have heard Choudhary Charan Singh and Pandit Jawahralal Nehru clashing with each other how to develop agriculture in  Nagpur Congress when the cooperation movement was supposed to a very important instrument in  developing agriculture. So, Pandit Jawaharlalji was for the development of agriculture from the very beginning. The concept of  planing which emerged is india was that industry and agriculture should develop simultaneously. But there is also one point to be thought of : that is, if at all agricultural development has to take place, it can only take place along with industrial  development. Without the industrial developmet there would not have been the level of development that we see in our country today. therefore, we differ  from Choudhary Saheb. (Interruption)
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I remember I was also in the State Administration for a long time  that when the second Plan was being prepared. I remember once, I told this incident in the Planning Commission meeting when I was the Finance Minister. Pandit Jawaharlalji  came to bombay when the Second plan was under preparation and he  gave his idea about what the second Five year plan was about. And t he idea was give priority to the basic key industries in the Second Plan. That was the only thing that was to be considered, not at the cost of agriculture. But for the first time emphasis was on the building of key industries in the country.