India - Development and Participation

My humble attempt at serious writing, within 400 words.

Note: If some parts seem abrupt, blame it on the 400 word limit.

A COMMENTARY ON “INDIA: DEVELOPMENT AND PARTICIPATION”

When India opened its economy to the world in 1991, it heralded a new era of liberalization, a break-away from the “License Raj” regime that had constrained the growth of the Indian Economy. The liberalization programme opened the doors to International Trade, and resulted in a renewed interest among the International Community in the possibilities of the Indian Economy, with Forbes magazine declaring in 1994 that “India may be the best emerging market of all”.

However, despite creditable growth in its development performance in 1990s, India’s economy never attained the anticipated “spectacular” growth. Although several MNCs entered India in the 1990s, contributing to the boom in economy, the growth did not percolate to all sectors and regions of the country. Although India’s economy has posted an excellent average GDP growth of 6.8% since 1994, it is still behind the East Asian economies.

The central issue, however, is not the overall growth of the economy, but rather, the pattern of this growth. The huge emphasis on highly skilled services sector resulted in this sector growing at an average of 7.7%. However, the primary agricultural sector has not been a part of the overall growth. This lack of participatory growth is responsible for India’s continuing problems of poverty and deprivation of the masses.

In order to achieve participatory growth, policy-makers must focus on social reforms and devise effective methods to implement these at the grass roots. Progress in basic education, health care, social security, land reforms, population control, gender and social equity, etc are essential to ensure participatory growth. The continued lack of basic education (illiteracy rate of over 35%) and inadequate health care facilities are reflections of the ineffectiveness of current policies. Gender discrimination and lack of awareness on population control need to be addressed. Better job opportunities need to be created in the agriculture sector to include rural masses in the economic growth of the country.

There needs to be a real commitment to relevant social reforms by policy makers in order to ensure participatory growth. It is important to recognize the complementarity between economic growth and social opportunities. While India has done well in the former respect, it is the continued neglect of the latter that has slowed down India’s overall development. The opportunities that Globalization has ushered into the economy needs to be equally distributed among all sectors to promote holistic human development.