The Hindu Business Line : <I>Inclusive growth </I>

The Prime Minister has of late been haranguing captains of industry for conspicuous consumption, cautioned against excessive remuneration and drawn attention to the need for inclusive growth. Not many will recall that it was the same person as finance minister who spoke some 60 years ago of the way the new economic policy would release the Indian consumer from the thraldom to controls and austerity. They would be able to enjoy those things, he said, (more or less) that hitherto they could only envy their cousins in Dubai and the US for. They could enjoy the good things of life without having to leave the country.

The growth picture

The huge increase in urban employment opportunities for the reasonably educated added to the numbers of young people with disposable incomes, thanks to ICT and outsourcing. But, now, the growth picture is beginning to pall. The rural areas and the backward regions are falling further behind. So the concern about the potential for social discontent is genuine and reasonable. But the government in Delhi is powerless to do anything about it.The reasons are not complicated. Agriculture, which has really slowed down to a point of being a threat to the overall health of the economy, is the largest private sector operation in the country. The state can do very little to affect it. It could pay farmers cash directly (which has been given up as too difficult to administer) or enable provision of fertiliser, seeds, pesticides and so on at low prices. Given the nature of the terrain, the size, the climate and rainfall, nothing much else can be done about irrigation. Farming methods do not change rapidly, nor do trading practices. The money lender's hold on the economy can be somewhat regulated. One could undertake a huge drive to spread the benefits of micro finance, and reduce of middlemen through use of technology. Even here mere provision of assets such as a meeting place, telecommunication and Internet connectivity through kiosks, for example, does not make for progress by themselves — unless the farmer is enabled by both education and other wherewithal to benefit from what he sees and hears. Otherwise, the distant exposure to a very modern world through a narrow window would only add to the frustration.

Call for action

Inclusive growth is a strange phrase. It suggests that the rural and less fortunate are being subject to a condescending treatment by someone else who is including him/her. This mental model is fundamentally arrogant and all wrong. India must be only country in the world where the modal human being, the ordinary person, is referred to blithely as `the masses' as if it were some lump of humanity that needed special consideration from the fully-fledged and full-paying members of society, namely the educated, the urban and generally better off people.

Can you think of any of the G-8 leaders or for that matter the leadership of China or Brazil refer to the bulk of their population as the masses whose economic needs demand attention? It seems only we Indians specialise in dividing our own brethren into all sorts of special categories and minority segments that need special treatment.

The only two methods we know of dealing with them are to either create more reservations, quotas or throw more money at them via budgetary allocations. No wonder at the end of several years the so-called leadership gives in so easily to berating some one else for the failure of the `outcomes' to happen. We obviously need a fresh look into ourselves, keep the talkers in Delhi out of it all, and let the collectors, Panchayat boards and state-level agencies to get on with the action.

S. Ramachander