The Jewellery Trade:
During the last two days, a large number of people associated with the jewellery manufacturing business have met me. Amritsar has been a critical market for jewellery manufacturers. There are thousands and thousands of those involved in gold trade and as traders and goldsmiths. The curbs on import of gold has hit them badly. Most of them are today virtually jobless.
The Central Government contends that the current account deficit has reached staggering 78 billion dollars last year. The foreign exchange expenditure of India has become more than the foreign exchange earnings. The adverse CAD had upset the parity between rupee and dollar. In order to prevent the outflow of dollars the government curbed gold imports by substantially hiking the import duties.
Today because of the dollar becoming more expensive, export earnings have risen. The current account deficit has substantially reduced. Millions of goldsmiths in the country cannot continue to be indefinitely underemployed or unemployed. It is too late for them to change their careers.
Has the time come for the government to review the curbs on gold imports and withdraw the high import duties to enable gold imports and end the crisis being caused to the goldsmith community?
The Congress Coffers
The Congress Party’s claim is that it has no money. Report in “The Times of India” today suggests that the Congress Party is claiming that it has inadequate resources to fight the Lok Sabha elections. It is not getting enough support from the conventional donors. I do not know whether this is true, but assuming it to be so, the Congress Party should introspect why such situation has arisen.
The Congress Party has run one of the most corrupt governments in the history. For ten years, its Ministers extorted money. The extortionists are today unwilling to dig in to the large resources they had collected. They have lost the will to fight. Why waste your resources in a losing battle?
The BJP had started ‘One Vote One Note’ campaign months before the elections were announced both on-line and off-line. We succeeded in collecting small donations from crores of people. Additionally, we approached conventional donors. There is a lesson for the Congress to learn- those who rely on extortion for collecting funds don’t get voluntary donations at the time of elections.