Pondy Lt Gov demits office

Lt Governor of Puducherry, Lt General (retd) A K Singh today demitted office after holding the post as additional charge for nearly two years.
Singh is Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and has been holding additional charge of Puducherry since July 2014.
He left from here for Chennai en route to Port Blair after taking the salute at a guard of honour presented by Puducherry Police outside Raj Nivas.
Chief Secretary Manoj Parida, IG of Police Kannan Jagadeesan, newly-elected legislators of Puducherry including former Chief Minister N Rangasamy and Lok Sabha MP R Radhakrishnan and other officials saw him off at Raj Nivas.

Singh, on the occasion, thanked the outgoing chief minister and his team of ministers for their cooperation and support.
Former IPS officer and BJP leader Kiran Bedi, who has been appointed the new Lt Governor of Puducherry, will assume office on May 29.

Public policies influence both distribution as well as
generation of income, Singh said, adding that there was a need to go beyond establishment of social safety nets to protect the vulnerably groups of society from the risks they face.
The focus, he said, must be on proving decent employment through policy intervention.
"India needs to create 12 million new jobs per annum to absorb new entrants to the labour force. The available data in unemployment point to significant gaps in our performance," he said.

The importance of growth cannot be ignored, he said, adding that the strategy which focuses on reducing inequality through redistribution of income, but ignores growth, is unlikely to lead to a sustained process of poverty reduction.
"India has to adopt a multi-pronged strategy that includes rapid growth, reducing poverty and creating employment opportunity, improving access to essential services in health and education, especially for weaker section, empowerment to education skill development and creating new job opportunity," he said.
The country can achieve the targets it has set for itself and effective employment strategy can be devised only through improved training and skill development.

Stating that thousands of students going abroad for higher education every year points to qualitative and quantitative gaps, Singh said there is a need for reassessing, reevaluating and reforming the system of higher education.
"Successive governments have tried to increase the spending on education to 6 per cent of GDP, but actual spending has hovered around 4 per cent for the last several years. Both health and education need to move up in terms of national priority," he added.
Government, urban and rural bodies, private sector have to come together to achieve zero growth in malnutrition, he said.
Regretting that there are large inequalities in health services, Singh said successive government have been responding to overcome the problem of hunger and malnutrition.