NEW DELHI: Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday asked India Inc to emerge out of the confines of balance sheets and daily doses of entertainment in the form of T-20 cricket to create alternative machinery for delivery of goods and services to the poor in Naxal-hit areas.
“On charitable note, you are quiet and if I have to be uncharitable, you are unconcerned.
How many of you have raised voices and have spoken for development or traveled to Naxal-hit areas or get inputs from your executives to improve the situation,” Chidambaram said while addressing the annual national conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.
“We must find a way to bridge the trust deficit. Money can actually flow into these areas. We have to find to put structures of governance and deliver goods and services,” he said, adding that people in Naxal-dominated areas do not have faith in the good sense of corporate India and also lack faith in government.
The Union Home Minister also threw a challenge: Whether India Inc can set up industries to drive development in these areas. “Even the Tatas cannot do today, what Tatas did 100 years ago.
Can you set up a steel plant in Chhattisgarh?” he asked.
To this B Muthuraman Vice Chairman of Tata Steel who had worked in Jharkhand and Orissa replied: “...when a corporate house goes to acquire land for a project it is opposed by variety of stakeholders and not by people.” Pointing out that problems would get worse by such stand, Chidambaram said, “You (business houses) say you cannot do it alone. I say I (government) cannot do it alone. It is here that we need to come together and work for development.” Despite claiming to be pro-poor, Maoists in 2009 alone demolished 79 schools, blasted 23 panchayat bhavans, destroyed 7 transmission polls, 67 telephone and mobile towers, 46 railway lines, two power plants, and several culverts and bridges.