The Hindu Business Line : ‘Post-reforms growth has bypassed rural folk’

Chennai, Sept 21 The benefits of high GDP growth during the post-reforms period have largely bypassed the rural population. While the quality of life has improved considerably in urban areas, a sizeable percentage of the farming community want to move out of agriculture, which is lagging way behind services and industry in terms of growth.

Dr Paul Appaswamy, Professor, Centre for Excellence in Environment Studies, Madras School of Economics, said this while delivering the inaugural address at Artha ‘07, a symposium on ‘Sectoral imbalances in the Indian economy’, organised by the Economics Association of the Madras Christian College (MCC). Social imbalances and the rural-urban divide, he said, were basically because of the failure to make adequate investments in human capital, especially education and health.

Economists’ role

In the panel discussion that followed, which was moderated by Dr C. Selvaraj, Head of the Department of Economics, MCC, Dr Appaswamy stressed the role of economists in protecting the environment through tools such as taxation and computation of social, economic and environmental costs. Elaborating on the theme ‘Industrial Policy and Development Trends’, Dr Suresh Babu, Professor in Economics, IIT Madras, said that while the 1990s did not experience the phenomenon of “jobless growth” of the 1980s, the rate of growth in real wages and share of wages in value-added fell quite substantially in the organised manufacturing sector. According to him, this was because of, among other factors, the declining power of collective bargaining and the emergence of sunrise industries.

On the topic of ‘Agriculture and Food Security’, Dr Swarna Vepa, Professor, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, said food security and an agricultural growth rate of 4 per cent were needed to sustain the momentum in economic and industrial growth. She also spoke about the possible dangers of a food shortage in the country, the ineffectiveness of the public distribution system and the increasing feminisation of Indian agriculture.

India’s success

The discussion on information technology was led by Mr M. Narayanan, Vice-President (Operations), Zenta Technologies, who traced the growth of ITeS from small-time back-office operations to the highly specialised KPO (knowledge process outsourcing). He pointed out that India’s success in IT was not merely because of the availability of ‘cheap’ labour but a result of the opportunities the country presented for both work and growth. He advised the students to look at the KPO sector as a career option.

On the banking sector, Mr Biswajit Mohanty, Vice-President and COO, SBI-DFHI, said that the rural and unorganised sectors needed attention if sectoral imbalances are to be corrected and that the banker’s job is to spread banking services as efficiently as possible to these sections through education, technology and policy variations.

The inter-collegiate competitions started with a debate, the topic being: ‘Are SEZs an engine for economic growth?’ This was followed by competitions such as problem-solving and quizzes. Prof G. Suresh Dhas, Department of Economics, MCC, gave away the prizes.

More Stories on : Economy | Rural Development | Tamil Nadu

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page