New Delhi: Charging the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government with "fiscal indiscipline", Congress today (April 7, 2004) said the wrong economic policies of the coalition had led to "shrinkage" in employment, decline in industrial growth and pledged to accelerate the growth rate to 10 per cent if voted to power.

Releasing its "Vision Document" on economy for the coming Lok Sabha elections, senior party leaders Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherjee told reporters that it would ensure economic growth with a just society, freedom from hunger and unemployment.

"This economic record of the NDA Government will not do. India deserves a better deal," Congress declared, adding that it would work for the realisation of 10 per cent economic growth in the next few years.

In a dig on BJP-led coalition which touted the growth figures in just two quarters, the party's Vision Document said it will revive the past capacity to grow at eight per cent not just for two quarters of a year but for a long period.

Manmohan Singh said no one in the world was "buying" their argument of higher economic growth and even quoted rating agency Moody's observation that it was not more than 6.5 per cent average.

According to Moody's, it was not possible to sustain high growth rate for a long period without development of the human resources and infrastructure, Singh said.

"The NDA Government makes much of the second quarter (2003-04), GDP growth figure of 8.4 per cent, but that depends on what the base was in the second quarter of 2002-03 and this base was low because agriculture declined by 3.05 per cent in this quarter."

Making a scathing attack on the BJP, the Vision Document pointed out various "failures" of the saffron party in reforming the economy.

"Unlike the Congress, the BJP had neither the heritage of modernising India, nor of championing the all-round progress of the economy. At the time reforms were introduced, BJP leaders who are now heading the Government were most vociferous in their opposition to the reforms," it said.

Seeking to take credit for the reforms, the Congress said the BJP could not appreciate the initiation of reforms in the 1980s under Indira Gandhi nor could they appreciate Rajiv's vision for India's modernisation.

"The mismanagement by the non-Congress Government cost the country a huge loss of output compared to its potential."

The Vision Document said the Congress wanted the middle class to genuinely prosper with great access to amenities of life.

"We want the corporate sector to grow as fast as it can, but it must bear some responsibility of helping the less privileged to enrich themselves," it said.

The document said a Congress Government will guide the growth process and mobilise the common people so as to facilitate the achievement of some priority national objectives like abolition of unemployment, poverty, hunger, illiteracy and ensure universal coverage of primary healthcare.

It will also restore the full growth potential to the farm sector which "has been grossly neglected by the BJP Government and which support most of our people, as also deliver development with accountability to the people.