I am also a rural man I may not be as deep a rural man as Choudhary Saheb is considered to be but I am also a rural man. So when he was discussing intimately with the Ministers, I was a junior minister, and I asked him the same qhestion which Choudhary Charan Singh is raising today, that by laying emphasis on the key industries do you think that agriculture will suffer? He said, 'Young man, you do not know, if you want to carry on your agriculture in a conventional manner you will remain where you are. But unless you take to the basic industries in this country and build them up,agriculture, itself will not be modernised. And he gave me explanation. If you want to have irrigation you must have big dams. If you want to have some sort of new energy to introduce in the agricultural life, you must have rural electrification. and this is exactly what has happened in the last 25 years. What is the use of merely quoting the figures, that there were so many agriculturists today.We quite agree that there is a heavy burden of manpower on the agricultural front. I am not denying that. There are difficulties also. The only way to remove that is to have industry, where prosperity can be ensured; that is one thing which can be accepted. Nobody had denied that improvement of small scale or village industries is a must. From the very beginning there has been emphasis on the village industries and the small scale industries. But naturally, when the basic industries were developed, at the present moment, today India can be counted as one country which cane stand in difficult times of crisis. This is so only because we succeeded in building heavy industries in or country. It cannot be forgotten that this is a the greatest contribution

About concentration of wealth in few hands, it is not something new that Choudhary Charan Singh is saying. The Congress itself, when they formed their Ten-point programmed in the ‘Sixties’ has said that there are number of resolutions of the Congress on record to say that the rich are becoming richer, and the poor are becoming poorer, because this was the basis on which the Congress people based their programmed. The process in still on. I do not deny that. But the solution is not what you say.

You have tried to describe the situation of poverty somewhat correctly. I am in agreement on that. But the solutions that you are suggesting are solutions meant for taking the country 200 years back. Therefore, those solutions are not acceptable to us. I tell you Choudhary Saheb that this fact is known to the Indian peasant more than you do. You try to take a position of being the spokesman of the agriculturists. We, in our own small way, can also claim that we have also representative character of the agriculturists. If you see that evidence of the eye in some of the villages at least, where irrigation water has reached, small industries have reached and fertilizer has reached, that there is a better situation. We do not mean to any that the poverty has gone. We also admit that the poverty is there and our main struggle will have to be against poverty. This is what the aim and objectives of this party is. Shri Charan Singh is an elderly person. I have great regards for him. Please do not take a miss. We differ from you on certain basic issues.... (Interruptions)