The Formidable FoursomeManmohan Singh, P Chidambaram, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and C Rangarajan – are firm believers in the “GDP growth-trickle down” philosophy. Based on this belief, Rangarajan has said: “With a 9 per cent GDP growth, under the very conservative assumption, the economy will reach a level where the workforce will match the labour force within a short period” – thus eliminating unemployment in the country.
Finance Minister Chidambaram has given a number – 10 years – to this “short period”. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has endorsed this approach: “India’s growth has been impressive – 9.7 per cent in 2006, 8.9 per cent in 2007 and we are viewing at 8.4 per cent in 2008. That is really an impressive growth pattern.”
The ground reality is that this “impressive growth pattern” is spawning inequitable and jobless, indeed job-loss, growth. In fact, it has created three Indias. One that has Asia’s wealthiest elite comprising the world’s fourth largest number of dollar billionaires and arguably the richest! The other India is one of the world’s poorest countries with the aam aadmi comprising 700 million people, most of whom are unemployed or underemployed, living on Rs 20 or less a day! In between is the burgeoning middle class and wannabes!
Chidambaram now wants “double digit development” and all obstacles to this removed: “It is not politically correct to talk about ideology today. It is ideology which is holding us back in doing the things which have to be done in order to accelerate the growth. I want to see 10 per cent growth before the tenure of this government ends in the financial year 2008-09. That is possible if we can put ideology aside.”
Alleviating poverty
through growth ‘with a
human face’ is to be cast
aside to achieve this
‘double-digit
development’
As rightly observed by Ashok Parthasarathi, this is a “copycat” version of the resource-guzzling “growth” model of the highly industrialized countries, which is unsustainable in Indian conditions. Yet, Ahluwalia rationalizes this in support of the middle class and “the upward mobility of their children”.
According to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index, India belongs to the bottom fourth of the world’s nations, with a rank of 94 (among 118 countries). This score is even lower than India’s dismal Human Development Index rank (126 of 177 countries). One reason for this abysmal state of affairs is that almost one-half of India’s children are malnourished and underweight. This brings out the depth and pervasiveness of poverty in India and the absence of livelihood security for its miserable millions. The simmering societal conflict manifested in the growing Naxalite movement is only to be expected!
Alleviating this pathetic poverty through growth “with a human face” is the “ideology” of the UPA government, which is to be cast aside to achieve “double-digit development”. Is this the new agenda of the aam aadmi government? It is for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to answer this vexing question!
Nevertheless, with senior civil servants like Yogendra Narain favouring GDP-linked salary growth, it is no wonder that IAS mandarins have jumped onto this bandwagon. Claiming credit for the “impressive GDP growth”, they stand ready to fulfil the Finance Minister’s dream of achieving “double digit development” provided they are given “parity of pay and perks” with the private sector. The IAS certainly seems to be on an odd tangent!
