President addresses joint session of Parliament

President Pratibha Patil is addressing the joint session of Parliament. Here's what she says the new government will focus on:

• Internal security and preservation of communal harmony
• Stepping up of economic growth in agriculture, manufacturing and services
• Consolidation of the existing flagship programmes for employment, education, health, rural infrastructure, urban renewal and introduction of new flagship programmes for food security and skill development
• Concerted action for the welfare of women, youth, children, other backward classes, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, minorities, the differently-abled and the elderly along with strengthened social protection
• Governance reform
• Creation and modernisation of infrastructure and capacity addition in key sectors
• Prudent fiscal management
• Energy security and environment protection
• Constructive and creative engagement with the world
• Promotion of a culture of enterprise and innovation
• Early passage of the Women's Reservation Bill in Parliament providing for one-third reservation to women in State legislatures and in Parliament
• Constitutional amendment to provide 50 per cent reservation for women in panchayats and urban local bodies
• Concerted effort to increase representation of women in Central government jobs
• A National Mission on Empowerment of Women for implementation of women-centric programmes in a mission mode to achieve better coordination
• A voluntary national youth corps which could take up creative social action around river cleaning and beautification programme beginning with the river Ganga
• Restructuring the Backward Regions Grant Fund, which overlaps with other development investment, to focus on decentralised planning and capacity building of elected panchayat representatives
• The next three years would be devoted to training panchayati raj functionaries in administering flagship programmes
• A public data policy to place all information covering non-strategic areas in the public domain
• Increasing transparency and public accountability of NREGA by enforcing social audit and ensuring grievance redressal by setting up district level ombudsman
• Strengthening Right to Information by suitably amending the law to provide for disclosure by government in all non-strategic areas
• Strengthening public accountability of flagship programmes by the creation of an Independent Evaluation Office catalysed by the Planning Commission
• Establishing mechanisms for performance monitoring and performance evaluation in government on a regular basis
• Five Annual Reports to be presented by government as Reports to the People on Education, Health, Employment, Environment and Infrastructure to generate a national debate
• Facilitating a Voluntary Technical Corps of professionals in all urban areas through JNNURM to support city development activities
• Enabling non-government organisations in the area of development action seeking government support through a web-based transaction on a government portal in which the status of the application will be transparently monitorable
• Provision of scholarships and social security schemes through accounts in post offices and banks and phased transition to smart cards
• Revamping of banks and post offices to become outreach units for financial inclusion complemented by business correspondents aided by technology