Paul hopes Singh govt will make efforts to eradicate poverty

H S Rao

London, Jul 26 (PTI) Highlighting the need to eradicate
poverty from India, leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul
has expressed the hope that the Manmohan Singh government will
pay more attention to the plight of ordinary people in an
effort to provide them better education, health and food.

"My only hope is that this government will pay more
attention to the ordinary people because we need to eradicate
the poverty and bring the standard of the ordinary people to
a level where people can get better education, health and
food," Lord Paul, who was declared 'Pride of India' by a
London-based charity on Friday, told PTI.

Asked to comment on the state of the Indian economy, Lord
Paul, recently appointed member of the Privy Council by the
British Queen, said "first of all India is quite a bit
affected by global crisis."

"The good thing of India has been the banks did not make
the same mistakes as some of the western economies. They are
fairly strong and safe," he said.

"In India, basically by nature, if there is a problem we
don't get panicked too easily. So there is the strength of
the banks, there is less panic. That is where Indian family
system helps. If one person loses the job at least there are
other people to support which does not exist (in the West).

"That is where our family helps a lot and the stigma of
having lost the job is not as bad as in the western world,"
Lord Paul said.

Commenting on the Congress-led UPA government, Lord
Paul, British Ambassador for Overseas Business aid "I think
we have a great Prime Minister; we have a wonderful Finance
Minister and after the last elections the government seems to
be jellying much better."

He said the recent budget "sounds much more promising
and I certainly hope that between the Prime Minister, very
experienced Finance minister and a reasonably good Cabinet we
should look forward to better results." PTI HSR
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