Interview

?FDI will vary from area to area?

Has the BJP become soft because of compulsion of coalition politics?

I said it in my speeches also that my own experience has been of two governments?one of Morarji in which there was a single party (JP) government and second, Vajpayee-led NDA government in which there are a number of parties participating. This NDA government is more representative of the people, both geographically and socially. In the Morarji government there was no representation from south and east. In the present government there is representa-tion from both south and east. I believe that it is the NDA government that has enabled national parties like the BJP to understand and appreciate concerns of the regional parties and correspondingly it is the NDA government that has made the regional parties understand what is national interest. This is a two-fold advantage, which, I believe, has strengthened federalism in a way, which no Congress government had been able to do earlier.

Has the BJP’svision of swadeshi economy been tempered by compulsions of liberalisation?

So far as BJP is concerned, it has been a severe critic of licence-permit-quota raj, which stemmed from the Marxist philosophy, that state should control all economic resources in the best interest of the society. And even when we favour swadeshi in economic matters, it did not mean a reversal of liberalisation. It simply meant that the country must depend essentially on its own resources and not on foreign resources. That does not mean closing our doors to foreign investments. This approach has been consistently adopted by the BJP government, and I think this is not against swadeshi.

What is your view on FDI?

It will vary from area to area and there may be reservations insofar as IT is concerned but these are matters that, as I said, should be discussed thoroughly and decided only after the elections. In the elections this should not be allowed to become an issue. After all, even countries like America have reservations in this matter. So India must study them closely.