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Is Inclusive Growth Measureable?
New Delhi, June 05, 2013
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“The government has come out
with twenty-five monitoring indicators to chart the
country’s inclusive growth over a period of time”, said
Montek Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission
of India, while delivering the CUTS 30th Anniversary Lecture
at New Delhi yesterday. “The same will soon be available on
the Planning Commission of India’s website for public
access”, he added.
The theme of the lecture was “Inclusive
Growth: What does it Mean”. Also speaking on the
occasion were Mr. Kirit Parikh, Executive Director of
Integrated Research for Action and Development who chaired
the session, Mr. TCA Srinivasa Raghavan, Editorial Advisor
to CEO, Kasturi & Sons and Mr. Surjit Bhalla, Managing
Director, Oxus Research and Investment.
As a precursor to the discussion, Parikh introduced
Inclusive Growth as an open matrix including development of
both poor as well as rich, without neglecting either.
Speaking on the occasion, Ahluwalia acknowledged that
Inclusive Growth is a multi-dimensional concept and giving
it a single definition would not be easy. He also stated
that the concept of Inclusive Growth has now evolved into
the concept of Inclusive and Sustainable Growth, but we
first need to grapple with growth per se, without ignoring
the sustainability dimension.
Nehru, the original growthwallah
Ahluwalia said that the government while looking at the
concept of growth has never focused on strengthening the
nation but on raising the nation to an acceptable level of
living. Calling Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, India’s first
Prime Minister, the original growthwallah of the country, he
reiterated and agreed with his words that to bring the
nation to an acceptable level of living, the national income
needs to be increased. These words are from Nehru’s drafting
in 1938 when he chaired the Indian National Congress’s
committee on the economy.
Answering the question on, ‘Does growth reduce poverty”,
Ahluwalia responded that in early days, the focus of growth
used to be only poverty reduction, however, it was gradually
realised that to bring in growth more than eradication of
poverty is needed. The cake has to be expanded to generate
resources for poverty reduction. Growth does not only mean
making poor people less poor but its prime focus should be
social mobility, i.e. giving people a chance to trade
their positions in society.
Inclusive growth on the other hand also faces the challenges
on reducing the gap between various classes in the country
such as the rural-urban divide, among various Indian states,
inequalities across various socio-economic groups based on
caste, gender, marginalised groups like religious/regional
minorities, handicapped etc.
Ahluwalia strongly felt that the focus of growth must not be
only on reducing poverty but it should also be a job
creating growth benefitting both lower as well as middle
class. He acknowledged that growth is affected not only by
government’s policies but also by global economy, cronyism,
among other factors. Keeping in mind the weak global economy
in future, India will need to strengthen its own backyard,
he added.
India can do seven pc growth in the next two years
He stated that India is capable of a growth performance
above 7 percent over the next two years if corrective and
timely measures are taken.
As per Ahluwalia, to achieve the level of growth China has
achieved India will need to improve infrastructure, improve
management of land and urbanisation so that new management
may be set up and finally introduce flexibility of labour
laws. Acknowledging that for a decent inclusive growth, less
restrictive labour laws will be required, however, consensus
will first be required from labour in this respect.
TCA Srinivasa Raghavan, agreeing with Ahluwalia’s view that
glass is certainly not full but is filling, asserted that
the problem is not with the Indian labour laws but with the
manner in which management manages the trade unions, and how
the labour courts perform. He said that the major way to
bring about inclusive growth will be by achieving
non-convexity.
Surjit Bhalla defined Inclusive Growth to mean equality of
opportunity. He acknowledged India as a unique
multi-dimensional country and mentioned that the country has
numerous success stories in terms of social mobility, child
mortality, sex ratio, etc. and there is a need to advertise
and market the story of India’s growth properly and he is
hopeful about change.
Lively Q&A session
There was a lively Q&A session, when numerous micro and
macro issues were raised by the over 100 participants in the
hall. For instance, a question was raised on the role of
private sector, and Ahluwalia responded that healthy
competition can lead to better corporate governance. On
sticky industrial relations, he said that consensus building
is going on, and in a democracy like India, it is not easy.
He asserted that non-discriminatory participation of every
citizen is required.
Questions were also raised on industrial relations, security
and other issues.
Pradeep Mehta of CUTS referring to his long association with
Ahluwalia and said that according to CUTS studies, flanking
policies such as education, health, social infrastructure
need to be effectively in place for reaping the benefits of
growth, otherwise it can lead to asymmetries.
Marking an end to the session, Kirit Parikh in his
summarization said that the multi-dimensional concept of
Inclusive Growth should translate to mean every child having
an expectation of a basic minimum income.
While proposing the vote of thanks, Bipul Chatterjee, said
that while it is easy to measure absolute growth, mechanics
of measuring inclusive growth need to be developed. Ends. |
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