Devil's Advocate: Kamal Nath

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Devil's Advocate: Kamal Nath

In an exclusive interview with Karan Thapar on Devil's Advocate, Minister of Industry and Commerce Kamal Nath discusses issues like Nandigram violence, SEZs and FDI in retail sector.

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Karan Thapar: Quite right. The catch is, let us know what you intend to do. Then we will decide whether we can give you the two years to do it or not?

Kamal Nath: Absolutely.

Karan Thapar: So once again, the initiative lies with the industry.

Kamal Nath: Yes, the initiative lies with the industry. Because that is a part of our common minimum programme.

Karan Thapar: Minister, you have ideas that you are yourself trying to bring up as Minister of Industries to encourage industry to do more for the weaker sections and I believe you think that the real secret lies in incentivising industry. Is that correct?

Kamal Nath: That's correct. I have looked at what is our growth pattern. Where are investments growing. Where is manufacturing taking place. Where is employment opportunities taking place. And when we look at the map in that, we see that there are large number of districts where nobody goes. Where nobody wants to go. Because they look for areas where there is infrastructure. Now, nobody puts up infrastructure where there is no industry. It's a chicken-and-egg situation.

Karan Thapar: For these districts where nobody goes, do you have a particular population profile that would actually meet your reservation requirements?

Kamal Nath: Of course. If there is captive area, if there is a district with high ST/SC and OBC population, and we incentivise industry to go there and set up industry there, to invest in that district, the captive area that they get to employ will be amongst those people.

Karan Thapar: If I am right, I believe there are 124 districts where ST/SCs constitute over 40% of the population and there are 104 where they constitute over 50% of the population. So those are the districts where you tell the industry to go and set up and in return you are offering incentives to encourage them.

Kamal Nath: Well, out of these, there are 50-odd districts you can take out, which are already under special packages -- our Northeastern package, our J&K package.

Karan Thapar: So there are 50 left which are under no packages?

Kamal Nath: About 50 to 60, I don't remember the exact figure. So, we say, what I am looking at is if we can incentivise industry to go to ST/SC and OBC districts to invest and we incentivise on employment. If they say we are going to put our Rs 100 crore and employ 20 people, it doesn't serve my purpose. I want them to create employment opportunities.

Karan Thapar: Tell me, what sort of incentives are you offering them to encourage them to go there.