The Hindu Business Line : Quality of growth

Two reports appearing in Tuesday’s newspapers show clearly that the quality of development in India is perhaps as satisfactory as the quantitative performance. The first report relates to India’s place in the global list of fastest growing cities. The second deals with the nature of the Internet boom in the country.

To take the first report, a study conducted by the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development has said that as many as 11 Indian cities figure in the list of the 100 fastest growing cities in the world, China occupying the first position in this respect. The important part of the finding is that, in the Indian list at least, a proportionately large number of small cities (alternatively, large towns) figure, a phenomenon which probably also marks the Chinese list.

The appearance of places like Durg-Bhilainagar in Chhattisgarh, Asansol in West Bengal, Dhanbad in Jharkhand, Aurangabad in Maharashtra, Chandigarh in Haryana-Punjab, Surat in Gujarat, Guwahati in Assam, and Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in the list indicates that economic growth in India has affected small cities as well, which has two important implications.

Key implications

The first is that the spurt in economic activity is today affecting people and societies in these regions, the most important inference being that the vast economic potential of the interior of the country has begun to be exploited, the possibilities of this being limitless.

The second implication is that, spatially, India’s economic development is becoming more balanced than has been the case till recently. The absence of such development, as history has shown, leads to the emergence of serious social problems over time, which could even affect the very stability of society as such. The spatial spread of development reduces such systemic social imbalances and, if planned well, could even lead to competition growing between economically-alive regions, thus aiding the entire process of national growth.

The second report focuses on the I-Cube 2007 Internet-usage study conducted by the e-technology group of IMRB International, which shows that the use of the Internet in the country has grown by more than 11 times over the past seven years and that, more importantly, the boom “is being driven not by the metros but by smaller and non-metro towns” where the growth in usage has been much faster. The implication of this is that the young people in non-metro big towns and small cities are becoming Net savvy which, among other things, points to the emergence of a workforce for the next two decades which will be equipped well to fuel the national economic growth even further.

Increasing compatibility

Further, the sharp increase in Internet usage is not taking place in cybercafés (whose numbers must have increased appreciably since 2000) but in schools and colleges, which means that students and the Net are becoming increasing compatible with each other. At some point, if it has not been already reached, this is going to have an impact on the quality of education, which again will be a plus-point for the country.

The central message of all this is that the content of economic growth in India is good, and it now depends solely on the policymakers playing their role effectively so that the country can find its rightful place in the comity of nations within the next decade.

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY