Advani to meet industrialists on economic crisis

The main Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate L K Advani will on Thursday meet industrialists to find out how bad the current economic crisis is, and ways to mitigate its impact.

Industry titans Mukesh Ambani, Anil Ambani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Rahul Bajaj, Shashi Ruia, Baba Kalyani, Nusli Wadia and Jaiprakash Gaur and heads of three leading industry chambers K V Kamath, Rajeev Chandrasekhar and Sajjan Jindal will share their understanding of the crisis with Advani.

Invitations were also sent out to Ratan Tata, Nandan Nilekani and Deepak Parekh, but they are travelling and wouldn’t be part of the discussions.

 

When contacted, former finance minister Yashwant Sinha told PTI that the meeting showed that the BJP was not just picking on government policies, but was also keen on making constructive suggestions.

“The BJP, as the principal Opposition party, has been reviewing certain economic policies and giving constructive suggestions to the government ...a crisis has been building up due to faulty policies (of the UPA) ...Advaniji as Leader of the Opposition is meeting captains of trade to understand how they looked at the situation and later make suggestions to the government,” Sinha said.

Last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh convened a meeting to learn from industrialists the problems facing them and the country in the wake of the US-born financial crisis spreading to other countries.

Besides Sinha, Advani would be joined by his colleagues Arun Shourie and Jaswant Singh at the meeting. Sinha, Shourie and Singh have been actively reviewing the economy’s health and twice sent their suggestions to the government.