Reconciling India's Growth with Development

The title of this article might appear hysterical and itself much debated .But there is a strong reason that leads to this debate so often. India's new economic policy had laid the stepping stone for face of modern India marching towards high standards of civilization but amidst all, cannot be forgotten our aim of following socialistic pattern of governance .UP government introduced the new word !inclusive growth" which has high T#P within the political audience. But let us not forget that if the words were food no one would have gone hungry. #ecently, our finance minister announced that India aims at $.%&'(P growth this year, the same was bac)ed by #BI. In fact, I*+ went ahead pegging the growth at ,.%& growth this year. There is no doubt that this government has propelled India towards a high growth tra-ectory. In fact if we analyse the growth scene, the revelations are .uite satisfying. In tenth year plan, India achieved growth rate of /./& with the last three years getting more than ,& growth rate. 0ven recession faced resilience from India which achieved a decent 1./& growth rate and recovered early to /.2& growth rate in fiscal 344,564.

7ell these highly satisfying numbers are -ust one side of the coin. 7e must understand that development is a very comprehensive term covering both social and economic growth. It is essential to get a clear image of India and not -ust see how this numbers shoot but it8s important that how they get to us. 'overnment uses the tool of various schemes to ta)e these numbers to unfortunate Indians who could not directly become the part of growth story. 9ighly appreciated :#0' ;:ational #ural 0mployment 'uarantee ct< is one of them .It8s important for us to have a view of social sector. +irst of all poverty ,unfortunately, has increased with economic growth .The planning commission recently accepted Tendul)ar =ommittee's report according to which >/& of Indian citizens are below poverty line;BP?< as compared to earlier figure of 3/&.0@perts claim even this figure of >/& as underestimated and much lower than the reality. Aur unemployment rate is at 64& of total employable population, we are consistently falling on 9(I ;9uman (evelopment Inde@< ran) which is widely accepted as barometer of country over all growth. Aur 9(I ran) is 6>2 and surprisingly we are eleventh economy of the world. There is a need to bridge this gap. Though government has been regularly using instrument of social sector schemes to empower the unfortunate Indians, there is a need for a strong policy measure which could bring employment to them on a permanent basis. *anufacturing should be encouraged as it brings large scale employment, a perfect e@ample is =hina. *ore over it applies highly to India considering its young population and good reserves of iron ore. nother important point is encouraging indigenous entrepreneurs in all the sectors of economy as they provide employment without repatriating the wealth. India has been investing highly in growth drivers li)e infrastructure where as health and education sectors are getting paltry share in comparison to population size. India is at a crucial stage of its growth with an urgent need for balanced distribution of growth benefits or else the current lopsided growth could bring ma-or social instability in

the future.
SOURCES: CENTRAL STATISTICAL ORGANISATION,WEBSITE OF WHO