Despite seven decades of Independence and freedom, a reasonably free economy for the past two decades and a period of rapid and continuous GDP growth durng these two decades, India is still not able to feed and provide some of the most basic amenities to more than fifty percent of its citizens. It is disturbing to note that this country hasn't been able to provide a dignified existence to more than half its population even after two decades of an above average economic growth. Specificallly, India is today lagging behind even countries like Bhutan and Bangladesh (much poorer countries) on some key human development indicators like life expectancy at birth, infant mortality, immunization for one year olds, etc. Harsh realities on the ground must be accepted now with an open mind. Economic growth is extremely important, otherwise, where would the revenue come from. So that part of the debate stands settled. Economic growth and productivity are a must.
Another reality in this country is that the ever growing divide between the haves and haves-not has gone unchecked for long (knowingly or unknowingly) and has now reached alarming proportions despite such good growth numbers attained over the last two decades. NSSO's and many other reports - based on empirical evidence, have and would support the asserion here, given the realities on the ground, that the rich-poor divide has widened despite a long period of rapid growth. Reasons are very many and some are complex too. However, the overall situation eventually appears to be a case of too many lost opportunities and too much of young nation's time.
A nation which continues to leave behind a majority of its people (large percentage of that left-out group would certainly be youth) from this growth process just cannot have sustainable growth, prosperity and peace (probably) over a long period of time. The nation is bound to flounder and fall behind at some point in time, if the present course is not corrected in a decisive manner. Hence, the need to democratise and humanise growth and development and achieve that optimum balance. And, therefore, the time has come for India to redefine the way growth and development numbers are looked at, measured, analysed and consumed in this country today. An open mind, fresh and innovative approach, political will, and a consensus over the approach to the subject appears to be the need of the hour.
It makes sense now to bring the paradigm of humane and local element into play in the way we look at economic growth/development performance of the nation. This cannot anymore be restricted to just the economic parameters like GDP, growth rate, per capita income, savings rate, exim growth rates, industrial productivity, forex reserves, trade deficit, fiscal deficit, monetary/currency health, and so on so forth. Development economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is right when he says India is still far from ensuring equity, achieving balanced growth and removing wide ranging and massive deprivations still existing in Indian society. He rightfully points out that India has actually been falling behind on several critical social indicators with respect to other developing economies. Given the realities as they exist today, there is definitely a case to reflect, to soul search, and to do a reality check.
As proof of pudding lies in eating it, the true meaning behind traditional growth/development numbers really lies in whether such high sounding numbers have a direct/indirect connect or an impact over the daily lives of common man at the grassroot level - especially of the hungry and poor, or not. The key lies in looking at whether the rate of economic growth matches the rate of quantitative and qualitative improvement in the daily life of the last man/woman standing in the line and not just of the "middle class" and whether that economic growth has widened the gap between rich and poor or reduced it.
It appears the trickle-down effect model of growth hasn't done much much to the lives of the majority of the billion plus - the most poor, hungry and ignorant of us appear to have been critically left behind in this process of rapid growth over the last twenty years. Time has arrived for India to start taking into account the overall health of the nation - incorporating actual development and performance on economic, human, social, environment, technology and innovation fronts into the overall performance to attain a holistic and inclusive picture of growth and development in this country and thereby - of the nation’s progress. The development lingo in our country actually needs a rejig and a revamp now.
With more than a century of experience of the developed world and having closely observed the last two decades of rapid GDP growth here in India (with some of the newly crowned bilionaires of the world being home grown now), it appears economic growth, by itself, has failed, in many ways, to "pull up" a satisfactory number of poor and hungry from levels of poverty in the way it should have had. The data shows that governmental welfare and intervention programs (notwithstanding their own ills have been largely instrumental in pushing sections of our poor out of abject poverty. Empirical data shows that the redistributive efforts of the government seem to have worked and have made the impact (albeit short of what they should have been) in removing deprivation than the growth per se. It is interesting note that in times of economic slowdown and growth rate diving to sub five percent, government latest numbers indicate that rate of poverty reduction has gone up. So the linkage between pure economic growth and poverty reduction on the ground looks disjointed to say the least. A serious disconnect seems to exist there.Another reality in this country is that the ever growing divide between the haves and haves-not has gone unchecked for long (knowingly or unknowingly) and has now reached alarming proportions despite such good growth numbers attained over the last two decades. NSSO's and many other reports - based on empirical evidence, have and would support the asserion here, given the realities on the ground, that the rich-poor divide has widened despite a long period of rapid growth. Reasons are very many and some are complex too. However, the overall situation eventually appears to be a case of too many lost opportunities and too much of young nation's time.
A nation which continues to leave behind a majority of its people (large percentage of that left-out group would certainly be youth) from this growth process just cannot have sustainable growth, prosperity and peace (probably) over a long period of time. The nation is bound to flounder and fall behind at some point in time, if the present course is not corrected in a decisive manner. Hence, the need to democratise and humanise growth and development and achieve that optimum balance. And, therefore, the time has come for India to redefine the way growth and development numbers are looked at, measured, analysed and consumed in this country today. An open mind, fresh and innovative approach, political will, and a consensus over the approach to the subject appears to be the need of the hour.
It makes sense now to bring the paradigm of humane and local element into play in the way we look at economic growth/development performance of the nation. This cannot anymore be restricted to just the economic parameters like GDP, growth rate, per capita income, savings rate, exim growth rates, industrial productivity, forex reserves, trade deficit, fiscal deficit, monetary/currency health, and so on so forth. Development economist and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is right when he says India is still far from ensuring equity, achieving balanced growth and removing wide ranging and massive deprivations still existing in Indian society. He rightfully points out that India has actually been falling behind on several critical social indicators with respect to other developing economies. Given the realities as they exist today, there is definitely a case to reflect, to soul search, and to do a reality check.
As proof of pudding lies in eating it, the true meaning behind traditional growth/development numbers really lies in whether such high sounding numbers have a direct/indirect connect or an impact over the daily lives of common man at the grassroot level - especially of the hungry and poor, or not. The key lies in looking at whether the rate of economic growth matches the rate of quantitative and qualitative improvement in the daily life of the last man/woman standing in the line and not just of the "middle class" and whether that economic growth has widened the gap between rich and poor or reduced it.
It appears the trickle-down effect model of growth hasn't done much much to the lives of the majority of the billion plus - the most poor, hungry and ignorant of us appear to have been critically left behind in this process of rapid growth over the last twenty years. Time has arrived for India to start taking into account the overall health of the nation - incorporating actual development and performance on economic, human, social, environment, technology and innovation fronts into the overall performance to attain a holistic and inclusive picture of growth and development in this country and thereby - of the nation’s progress. The development lingo in our country actually needs a rejig and a revamp now.
Let's look at United States - the world's biggest economy, a benchmark and a gold standard, in many ways, for developing economies across the world and including ours. Quoting Wikipedia, "with the poverty level at $23,050 (total yearly income) for a family of four in 2012, it is estimated that most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point in time - between the ages 25 and 75. Poverty rates are persistently higher in rural and inner city parts of the country as compared to suburban areas." Per Wikipedia, the U.S. Census Bureau, in November 2012, informed that more than 16% of the population lived in poverty in the United States, including almost 20% of American children - highest level since 1993. In 2011, extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, was double 1996 levels at 1.5 million households, including 2.8 million children. In 2011, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels. In 2009 the number of people who were in poverty was approaching 1960s levels that led to the national War on Poverty.
More importantly, today, a staggering 47.8 million i.e. 15 percent of the US population receives food stamp benefits, nearly double the rate of 1975. The US Department of Agriculture informs that 47.79 million people were enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in December, 2012. "We spend a trillion dollars each year on federal poverty programs. That’s more than the budget for Social Security or Defense,” “But poverty seems only to increase. Something is wrong. Compassion demands that we change.", said Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, during one of his weekly addresses.
Therefore, we at home also need to do some serious rethinking with due open mindedness on the way we look at development numbers. Rather than focusing all energies on enhancing indicators like GDP, national income, per capita income, growth rate and ilk, it’s time to develop a more rounded and holistic orientation to the overall growth and development perspective. Efforts should be made to make these numbers less skewed, less superficial, more realistic, more rational, more logical, more broad-based, rooted more in realities on the ground besides keeping a laser like focus on the “human dimension” and to the “domestic/local context”.
I believe it will make sense to collect data and measure performance on above parameters in critical areas of healthcare, education, nutrition, income distribution, real employment, gender discrimination, depth of poverty (how far are poor away from poverty line) and just poverty alone, continued access to basic amenities (like safe drinking water, hygienic sanitation, electricity, pucca housing and primary healthcare), infrastructure creation, and others. Devising and incorporating metrics on the delivery of a basket of critical and important welfare schemes/services and infrastructure projects in the above mentioned areas will add a lot of credibility to the growth/development numbers. Because “whatever gets measured gets done”.
For instance, the government could go ahead and incorporate some of these: percentage of population below poverty line, functional literacy rate, school enrolment ratio, school drop-out rates, percentage of students starting Class 1 who reach Class 5, average schooling years of the population, girls to boys ratio in education, life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality rate, percentage of infants immunised, percentage of underweight and malnourished children and anaemic mothers, percentage of births at hospitals/nursing homes/health centres, death rate due to diseases (TB/HIV/Malaria), access to safe portable drinking water, access to hygienic and respectable sanitation, female-male ratio, percentage of women in wage and skilled employment, number of skilled and unskilled jobs created, slum population as percentage of urban populace, mobile/internet/computer penetration per 100 persons, per capita energy use, per capita CO2 emissions, per capita consumption of chloro-flouro carbons, forest to land area, number of new technologies and innovations operationalized to fruition – e.g. clean fuel, energy saving/efficiency, modern irrigation, water conservation, manufacturing, etc., by assigning their appropriate weightages into the overall growth and development number calculations.
Hope there are ways to capture the data enabling calculation of such performance metrics in social services, welfare delivery, education, health and environment sectors. Surely, development economists and statisticians would figure a way out to do so if the nation needs it. It is quite possible that data in many of these areas are available and are already being collected by different agencies -within the government and outside. It is also quite possible that some of these suggested metrics may still get hard to quantify and capture in a meaningful way due to the complexities involved and therefore, those could be left out of consideration for now. However, the number crunching on the most critical ones looks no rocket science to attempt and to achieve. It is just that the government needs to gather enough political will and apply its mind and resources to get going on this. Needless to reiterate the old adage...."whatever gets measured gets done"....... for the positives of such a move are wide ranging and many.
Let's roll up our sleeves and find out where do we actually stand today and then prepare for the road ahead. Time is running out. Not only our poor and hungry are waiting for help but the world is looking at us to show the new way to make it a better place to live and thrive..
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