CHENNAI: The worst disease in the country is corruption, G Viswanathan, founder of Vellore Institute of Technology, said on Saturday. He was presiding over a discussion meeting on the Union Budget in which speakers of various political parties participated. The discussion was moderated by S Gurumurthy, editor of Thuglak magazine. Inaugurating the event, Viswanathan said corruption was preventing governmental benefits from reaching the people.
“India is the fifth-largest economy, but still we rank 145 in per capita income and worst in unemployment. While consumption of power plays a role in deciding the growth of a nation, World Bank reports that more than 22 per cent of the nation do not have power supply,” he said. Pointing out how a budget should be and the merits and demerits of the recently presented Union budget, S Gurumurthy said the peace of a country depends on economy and in order to have an efficient economy, every political party in the country has the responsibility to discuss and debate about it.
“The government and RBI which are the two main bodies of the Indian economy are always under conflict and it is time they work together. What I like in the budget is for the first time the budget did not boast of what will be contributed to the minority or the lower caste people but it spoke of what the budget has done to improve the lives of those people. Furthermore, the budget was visionary pointing out to the next five years rather than limiting it to just one year,” he said.
On public sector undertakings being sold to private sector, N Siva, MP said these public sector units were the ones which helped to bring back our fallen economy.