The Hindu Business Line : Equal opportunities key for faster growth: Montek

(From right) Prof Amartya Sen, Mr Onkar S. Kanwar, President of FICCI, Prof J.S. Sodhi, Executive Director, SRC, and Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, at a national seminar on `Development and Nationhood: An India Perspective', in the Capital on Monday. — Kamal Narang

New Delhi , Jan. 3

The Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, on Monday said that the greatest challenge confronting the nation is to sell economic reform policies in a manner that individuals begin to perceive them as inclusive, that it has something in it for them.

Lending a social dimension to Lord Meghnad Desai's plea for accelerated economic growth, within an overall social security system, the Deputy Chairman said, "the need of the hour is faster economic growth along with equality of opportunity to create wealth as `the tolerance of an unequal outcome' is higher when people at large began to think that development will bring some good to them."

Dr Ahluwalia was speaking at a national seminar on Development and Nationhood: An Indian Perspective, organised by FICCI and Sri Ram Centre for Industrial Research.

Earlier, Lord Meghnad Desai, Professor Emeritus, London School of Economics, traced the fragmentation of Indian politics to historically low rates of economic growth.

Describing the reassertion of regional parties as the direct outcome of social and spatial disparities, Lord Desai said this sowed the seeds of India becoming a multi-national polity.

The primary loyalty of leaders of these political parties lay with regional aspirations, the notion being that prosperity in States and regions would lead to national prosperity.

He said India needs a grand coalition designed to accelerate the rate of economic growth that widens the space in a non-State sphere that encourages and nurtures economic activities that produce surplus value, creates productive jobs and puts an end to competitive populism.

The seminar was chaired by Prof. Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate and Lamont University Professor of Economics, Harward University, and addressed by Mr Onkar S. Kanwar, FICCI President.

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