President to focus on Modi govt's revival road map

Amid searing heat, a possibly deficient monsoon and serious financial challenges, including the problem of how to tackle the retrospective taxation issue, President Pranab Mukherjee's address to a joint sitting of the two Houses of Parliament on Monday is likely to spell out the road map of the new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

According to government sources, the thrust of his speech could be the government's economic management. The priority is likely to be attending to the "imminent" challenges in checking price rise, encouraging economic revival, recovering from a decade of "jobless growth" through launching infrastructure projects, such as housing for the poor, while taking up policies to set the new government on a path of financial rectitude. Attacks or criticism of the previous government are unlikely.

The President's address could devote adequate space to Modi's big ideas of unbundling the Food Corporation of India (FCI), initiating a separate scheme to guarantee income insurance to farmers, boosting the tourism sector, a price stabilisation fund for crops and managing likelihood of scarce rainfall through supply-side measures like releasing foodgrain in the open market and reining in hoarders and blackmarketeers.