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Special Articles / Shankar Pathak / Social Policy, Social Welfare and Social Development Goals for India by the end of this century: “poverty, as we have known it, will be a thing of the past. Every village in India will be electrified, assured of clean drinking water and adequate health services. Education will be available to every child. Our family planning programmes will have covered the entire population. And population growth, which in the past has eaten up much of the growth in the productions, will have been brought down to almost one percent.” P.M. Rajiv Gandhi in New York October, 1987 ‘Look at this picture and that’ Hamlet, Shakespeare Arming himself with a prod like cart men do while driving bullock carts in sleepy villages and with a big polythene slack slung guardedly over his shoulder as if it contains a mini supermarket of goodies, the rag picker makes his appearance everyday with a cosmic punctuality on my early morning walking route. A wiry man dressed in a faded shirt and a dhoti folded up carelessly to remain at half mast over his spindly legs to facilitate unhindered mobility, he goes about his job looking for what he wants mostly from dustbins. On spotting his object of quest, he lances it like a hunter harpooning a whale on the high seas. I go for the morning walk bleary-eyed, no doubt, propelled by my doctor and compelled by my magisterial wife so I can off load on the way the over-the-limit excess of lipids-bad cholesterol, triglycerides and the resultant bulge in the middle. As I see the rag picker dipping his stick or even his hands into the yucky dustbin picking germs, viruses, bugs and such, I cannot but wonder the cross purposes of such morning outings by two different human beings. J.S. Raghavan Economy After thirty five years of planned development “major structural changes in Indian economy have taken place, although not to the extent desired by the planners” observed well known developmental economist and Economic Advisor to the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, Sukhmoy Chakravarty in 1987. Since then there have been major changes in the planning process and economic policy. Planning has become more an indicative planning than holding a “Commanding Position” in the economic development as it was before 1990-91, when the reform era began throwing open the country’s economy for the operation of global powers in international market. These include gradual removing the trade barriers, permitting the foreign capital investment (FIIs), increasing the cap on their investment to 49 percent in some sectors etc. Control over foreign exchange has been relaxed to a great extent, with partial convertibility of rupee in foreign exchange, opening the door to foreign investment in branded retail market to the multi-national giant retail companies such as Walmart which has led to a major political controversy, stalling the parliament proceedings during its brief winter session (November, 2012). The latter process is briefly described as globalisation and privatisation or alternatively as economic reforms. During the past sixty years of planned development the country has grown from a long term trend rate of 3.5 percent until 1980 dubbed as “Hindu Growth Rate” by Raj Krishna, to 6.4 per cent “New Hindu Growth Rate,” phrase coined by T.N. Srinivasan, during the next thirty years (1980-2010) and it was 9 percent in 2007-08. Since then it has gradually decelerated and is expected to be 5 per cent during the current year i.e. 2012-13. This has led to loss of jobs- about 2 million to 3 million according to one estimate (Ahluwalia) and that along with the high inflation rate, especially food inflation rate of 7 to 8 percent during 2008-2012, would have pushed more people into poverty, about 35 percent if we adopt the Planning Commission norm, may be even as high as 50 percent, if we adopt a broader definition of poverty to include health, education and shelter which would not be considered as “inclusive development”, official slogan for the last two five year plans. Population India has the second largest population in the world with 121 million people- next to China which is number one with more than 131 million population. India accounts for 2.4 percent of the world surface area, with 17.5 per cent of the world population. At the time of independence India had approximately 340 million people. Between 1971 and 1991 population grew about 2.15 percent annually and from 1991 there is a gradual decline in the annual growth rate and it is now (2011) 1.6 percent. We are now in the third stage of “Demographic Transition” and moving towards the fourth stage “which is characterised by a stable population with low birth and death rates and higher level of socio-economic development”. Some of the states and union territories are already in the fourth stage with low fertility rate of 2.2 close to the replacement level of 2.1. This is a major achievement of our planned development. However, there is a disturbing feature in this of continuing deterioration of gender-ratio which is number of females per 1000 males. This trend has been there throughout the last century except for two census years (1971 and 2001) when it was static. It is 943 according to 2011 census which may indicate improving trend.* But it is too early to conclude. Life expectancy has almost doubled since independence from 33 years to over 65 years. Adult literacy rate has increased approximately four times from 18 per cent to 75 per cent. Death rate (7.2 per cent) for the population as a whole and also maternal (154) and infant mortality (43) rates have come down significantly. But the latter two mortality rates is still a matter of great concern. The proportion of dependent population (Children below 14 years and adults above 60 years) is less than the total working age population which is called as ‘demographic dividend’. But it is also a challenge in terms of providing employment on a reasonable family income which should be above the poverty line, based on an expenditure per capita to take care not only nutritional requirements but also expenditure on health, education and shelter. On the basis of a broader definition of poverty as suggested above we now have more than 40 percent of the people in poverty, a matter that should be a cause of embarrassment, if not shame after sixty years of planned development. Health Improved life expectancy was mainly achieved through public health measures like sanitation, safe drinking water supply and national level mass immunisation programmes which were responsible in eradicating epidemic diseases like plague, cholera, small pox etc, and control of malaria and tuberculosis (TB). TB is still a serious health problem especially pulmonary TB among the poorer sections of the populations. More than 1000 people die every day due to TB. Adding to the list is the recent success of eradicating polio through national level pulse polio programme, with the active collaboration both by way of provision of funds and developing a strategy by the Rotary International and Rotary India. We have just completed two polio free years. Hopefully this will be continued and the progress consolidated. Another major disease is HIV-Aids. Though it was predicted that the incidence of HIV-Aids will reach 25 million people in 2010, there has been a surprising success in controlling it. The incidence is 1.5 million people. This was achieved by the financial support of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank, and by developing an innovative strategy of distributing condoms free to brothels in red-light areas of the major cities. Cultural factor such as women not having “many male partners” is also considered as a major favourable factor. There are disturbing features in the health scenario. Incidence of life style diseases such as cardio-vascular diseases and diabetes among the “affluentzi” and oral and lung cancer among the poor due to consumption of tobacco (Beedi, Gutka, Pan etc) have been noted. In the case of cardio-vascular diseases increased consumption of cholesterol rich food, including popular junk food like burgers, cola, noodles etc. and sweets, along with decreasing physical activity due to sedentary lifestyle, notwithstanding the proliferation of “fitness clubs” in the neighbourhood of the affluentzi residential areas seem to be a major factor. There has been a widespread chant of inadequate fund allocations to the health sector in the plans and government expenditures which is around 2 per cent or less of G.D.P.during the past sixty years, and there is a clamour for more allocation of funds, comparing the expenditure on health in South Korea and developed countries. It is, however, not recognised that even this “meagre” allocation of funds is misutilised or misspent by opening more and more AIIMS like institutes in medical education and multi-speciality/ super-speciality hospitals with 5 star rating in urban areas, catering to the diagnosis and treatment of life style diseases of the rich and expensive treatment of cancer. Statements are made by the ministers, politicians etc, with a syrupy phrase like “poor will be treated at the OPDs and provided with certain number of beds, and that the treatment will be free or inexpensive”. No attention is given to expanding and strengthening the diagnostic and treatment facilities at the primary health centres in rural areas, and providing similar facilities in urban areas to the poor people. A recent report (2012) by the Ministry of Water Resources indicate that only around 15 per cent of the budget allocations for supplying purified water has been spent, with the expenditure rate for Uttar Pradesh being lower than one per cent, for Andhra Pradesh less than 3 per cent and for Karnataka considered as one of the better administered state, the expenditure was 20 per cent. Latest report says that the annual expenditure is 50 per cent. Education The literacy rate has increased four times since independence which gives a positive picture. In fact the effective literacy rate is much lower though difficult to calculate. We were expected to achieve universal elementary education of children by 1960. We are nowhere near that target. The macro-level indictor does not reveal the lower rate of literacy among females, and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, and also the inter-regional and intra-state variations. As regards higher education, enrolment has increased several times than what it was at the time of independence. Currently it is estimated to be around 18 to 19 percent of the relevant population and the target is to achieve 30 percent by the end of 12th Five Year Plan. It has been found that the quality of higher education is very unsatisfactory. More than half of the engineering graduates in the I.T. stream are unemployable. Similarly only about 21 per cent of the business management graduates are employable. Out of 145 deemed universities, 53 were taken up for scrutiny by an UGC Committee and it was found that only 10 had properly implemented the guidelines. According to a recent study of 120 B.Ed colleges of Bangalore University only 12 colleges were found to be satisfactory. Most of the graduates with a degree in arts, science and commerce are unemployable and are unemployed, because, the higher education system has not been linked to the market requirement of skill needed for the jobs that are available. There have been three reports since independence {Radhakrishnan Committee and Kothari Commitee and another committee on vocational education [Mudaliar Committee]}. Most of their recommendations have been ignored. What we have produced is a large number of “educated illiterates”, a phrase coined by an observer of the educational scene. It has been a recurrent complaint by the educational experts that the allocation of funds for education is very low, about 3 percent of G.D.P. (occasionally it has been 4 percent) and that it should be increased to 6 percent. What is worrying is not the low percentage of funds allocated to education, but its misutilisation by spending disproportionately more on IITs, IT, IITS and IIMs, catering to the needs of the “affluentzi”, subsidising the students of expensive elite professional institutions. This is admitted even by the Economic Survey of 2012 which refers briefly to the iniquitous nature of the subsidy. J. P. Naik, eminent educationist and Secretary of the Second Education Commission, analysing the educational policy and its implementation after the first three five year plans concluded with the sentence, “It is a class which gained power after independence and it is that class which has benefitted”. It should be remembered that he was a Gandhian and not a Marxist. Another eminent economist-educationist and also a distinguished international civil servant (he was Deputy Director-General of UNESCO for several years) Dr. Malcolm Adishesaiah, writing in the Indian Social Science Journal during the 1980s came to the disturbing conclusion that the poor in India subsidise the higher education of the affluent students by being deprived of their rightful share of elementary education ! The situation about the prevailing condition of the government rural primary schools led the Supreme Court to direct the government to provide basic facilities like toilets and drinking water to the students of these schools. An expert committee of the Government of Karnataka after a survey revealed that there are 50,000 vacancies of teachers in the state, presumably in the government run institutions. Later report mentioned that there were 40,000 vacancies of teachers in primary schools and the state government intended to fill 4000 vacancies by appointing “Guest Teachers” on a paltry salary of Rs. 4,500 to 5,000. The mandatory three year period for the implementation of RTE norms is over and while the central government claims 59 p.c compliance, the NGO’s estimate is just 7 p.c. A nationwide trend has been noticed that the parents prefer to send their children for primary education to private schools by paying more by way of fees. This has been interpreted as dissatisfaction about the quality of education provided by the public education system and also parental preference for english medium schools which provide better quality of education. A major research by Amrita Chudgar, Assistant Professor at the University’s College of Education, (Michigan State University) came to the conclusion, “while it might be true that children who attend private schools were overall much better off than those who did not, it was not straightforward to conclude they did well only because of the schools they were attending”. The researcher analysed reading, writing and maths performance of 10,000 Indian students- 7000 from rural areas and 3000 from cities and towns, a national representative survey of 41,554 households. The report said “our study finds no systematic benefit in attending private schools”. She said “that the main implication is to recognise that the debate is not settled regarding public and private schools because private school students come from families with higher income and education levels” (DH 29, 2012). The quality of education at all levels seems to be deteriorating. According to the latest ASER survey (Pratham) 2012, learning level of rural students has deteriorated further since 2010, two years after the Right to Education (RTE) came into force. Across the country in rural areas children’s ability to read simple text and do basic arithmetic had declined since 2010. 53 per cent of all rural children in standard V could not read standard II level text. Those who were in Standard III who could not read standard I text, increased steadily from 53.4 per cent to 61.3 per cent in 2012. There is a steady and increasing rate of enrolment of rural children in private primary schools by the parents due to their perceived better quality of instruction in private schools, despite experts’ opinion which expressed doubts over the superiority in terms of outcome of the pupils of private schools. Most of the S.C and S.T children are enrolled in the government schools. While the latest census data gives 75 per cent literacy rate which is more than four times the rate prevalent at the time of independence, the effective rate of literacy, simply defined as the ability to use literacy skills as part of their day-to-day life at work and outside, is much lower though difficult to estimate. There has been only one exercise to estimate effective literacy in West Bengal some decades ago and this has not been repeated to cover the country as a whole by either academic researchers or government committees and NGO surveys. All the same, taking various data including the latest report of ASER, field studies in some villages of U.P- both qualitative, impressionistic (Dreze and others) and quantitative sample surveys during 90s, and enrolment ratio of students in secondary and tertiary levels of education, we may hazard a guess of about 60 per cent effective literacy - slightly lower in rural areas and higher in urban areas. Effective rate of numeracy would be even lower than the effective rate of literacy. Planned Development and Poverty Eradication The planning process which began in 1950 did not give any specific attention to the problem of mass poverty and its gradual elimination until the formulation of the fifth five year plan. However, there was a discussion on whether the level of living of the people had improved after two five year plans. A committee set up by the Planning Commission came to the conclusion “not proven” which Chakravarty calls as a Scottish verdict. Another working group was set up consisting of eminent economists D. R. Gadgil, B. N. Ganguly, P. S. Lokanathan and V. K. R. V. Rao, and two prominent opposition politicians- Minoo Masani and Ashok Mehta. They made a recommendation for the minimum levels of living which included public consumption of housing and education, and other private consumption (perhaps implying food and clothing). Calculated at 1960-61 prices the basic minimum was to be no less than Rs. 20 per capita for rural areas and Rs. 25 per capita per month for the urban areas. Note that in 2010 another committee of the Planning Commission (Tendulkar Committee) recommended “people consuming more than Rs. 28.65 per day in cities and Rs. 22.42 in rural areas are not considered poor” which would constitute poverty line. This indicates the changing ideas of levels of living and absolute poverty based on nutritional norms. There have been several definitions of poverty, at one end based on only nutritional norms- i.e. biological definitions of poverty and at the other end including expenditure on health, housing and education. There is also the definition of “poor and vulnerable” by the Sengupta Committee which estimated 77 percent of the population of the country to be in this category in 2005. (Jean Dreze has suggested that about five percentage points may be reduced due to computational errors). Attempts at estimating poverty ratio began with the estimates of Dandekar and Rath in 1971. Since then there have been several estimates, some retrospectively beginning from 1960-61, to decide whether incidence of poverty has declined over a period of time. Ahluwalia’s estimate of long term trend of rural poverty for the World Bank, and several periodical estimates of Planning Commission generally concluded that the poverty ratio has declined over a period of time of 30 to 40 years, though the estimate of extent of decline varies by different authors. The Planning Commission has estimated 27 percent as poverty ratio in 2001 and 30 percent in 2010. Though the procedures and definitions are not the same but the source of the estimates is N. S. S. consumption expenditure at different periods. We get a different picture, a very disturbing picture when we take the absolute number of people in poverty. One or two examples will suffice. According to Tendulkar and Jain there were 260 million poor people in 1983 at the ratio of 36 percent. If we take the latest estimate of 30 percent in 2011 by the Planning Commission based on Tendulkar Committee’s recommendation there are 360 million people who are poor in 2011, a net increase of 100 million people over 1983 which works out to 38 percent increase! In other words in 2010 there were 360 million people poor which was the total population of the country in 1971! The discussion on poverty has always focussed on the poverty ratio, trying to prove generally that it has declined, even if it fluctuated in between the period of twenty, thirty or forty years. This exercise has been dubbed recently by Shrivastava and Kothari as “Poverty Measurement Industry”. Arjun Appadorai (internationally well known anthropologist) has referred to the ideology of measurement. Breman says that there is a dissociation between the macro- optimism of the economists and micro-pessimism of the anthropologists about measuring poverty and also about its declining trend after the economic reforms. The economists rely unquestioningly on the macro level N. S. S. data of consumption expenditure, occasionally re-estimating after making allowance for the change of schedule format for N. S. S survey, and also for price variations across the country, by using very sophisticated econometric exercises {e.g. Sundaram and Tendulkar; Deaton and Dreze in EPW 2002-2003} arrive at estimates which may be higher or lower than the official estimates of the Planning Commission. Anthropologists (Jan Breman in south Gujarat- Valsad, Surat and Ahmedabad and A. Roy for recent immigrants in the city of Calcutta) have spent considerable length of time, sometimes several years, using qualitative methods of research such as direct interviews and make non-quantitative impressionistic judgements about poverty. Breman and Roy feel that poverty has increased considerably after the economic reforms (cf Breman, EPW Oct 3, 2003). Some economists also have done intensive qualitative studies of poverty in rural areas, S.S. Jodhka and A. Krishna in Rajasthan, and Kozel and Parker in U.P and Bihar. They provide us with valuable insights about the prevalence of poverty and the social features that cause extreme poverty. Indira Hirway, another economist, made an indepth study of six villages in three districts of Gujarat to check the BPL identification survey for the Planning Commission in 1997 (see EPW. Nov, 2003). It is a very valuable contribution for understanding the serious problems of correctly identifying the poor in rural areas, and the distorting influence of the rural hierarchical power structure, upper caste landowning rich farmers. Her primary study revealed that in four villages of two districts including a tribal village, the incidence of poverty was two to two and half times more than the official estimate of the Planning Commission based on N.S.S. data. Planning and Inequality: Indian society has been characterised by hierarchy and inequality for thousands of years. From 1960s onwards the planners began to devote attention to the problem of inequality and ways of reducing it. Pitambar Pant of the Perspective Division of the Planning Commission prepared a paper and came to the conclusion “that some degree of inequality in incomes is thus an essential part of structure of incentives in any growing economy”. He also came to the conclusion that distribution of income amongst the upper 80 percent of the population in 1975 may not be very different from the present pattern (1960-61). He thought that the lowest 20 percent were not likely to be affected (positively) by the growth process and had to be taken care of by means of transfer payments etc. There have been very few studies of economic inequality during the past sixty years of planning. The much quoted R.B.I study of land assets in 1991 is one such study and the rarely quoted, perhaps unnoticed, NCAER study of changes in income distribution between 1967-68 and 1975-76 is another study. There are other studies which refer to ownership of assets or percent share of GDP of the top richest Indians (Forbes list of billionaires) or assets owned by some of the business houses which are also referred to in the economic literature. We will make use of these though they are inadequate, being one shot study not repeated later and thus unsatisfactory for a proper analysis. According to the R. B. I. study the top 10 percent held more than 50 percent of the productive assets such as land in both rural and urban areas. NCAER study revealed that bottom 10 percent had a share of 1.86 income in 1967-68 and it was 2.27 in 1975-76. For the same period the top 10 percent had income of 36.49 and 33.88 percent respectively. If we take the top 20 percent, their share of income was 53 percent in 1967-68 and 49 percent for the same period. Bottom 20 percent had a share of 5 percent in 1975-76. The conclusion was that inequality had decreased! But it was still highly skewed income and the concentration of income for the top 20 percent was approximately two and a half times of their rightful share and for the bottom 20 percent it was only one third of their legitimate share. Since then, all available data indicate, that inequality has increased sharply especially during past fifteen years of the “reform era”. The number of billionaires in the Forbes list of 100 rich Indians has increased from 48 to 55 during the last three years and these persons own about 1/3 of the GDP. The productive assets of either the House of Tatas or Birlas was almost equal to the earthly possession of 100 million rural Indians. It has also been estimated that the share in GDP of the top 10 percent of its population went up from 40 percent in 1950 to 50 percent in 1985 i.e. they had five times more than their entitlement if the GDP was to be distributed on the principle of equality (Patel, EPW, 1991). A. Bannerjee and Picketty, on the basis of the data from the individual tax returns from 1956 to 1998 find that after 1987-88 and particularly after 1993 the income of the richest Indians grew rapidly. The average income of the top 1 percent increased nearly half and income of the top 0.1 percent nearly tripled in real terms. They note that the wealthy are largely missing from the survey data. They conclude that compared to 1982, there is a higher level of inequality in the country. Breman states that the official surveys do not include unofficial slum population. Even the above analysis does not take into account the fact that most of the top 1 percent does not declare their real total income. These are the people who have substantial amount of black money. It was estimated that during the 1980’s the total black money in the country was anywhere between 18 percent to 50 percent of the GDP (different estimates). It would have increased even more following the liberalisation and may be as high as 70 percent or even more. According to a report by a U.S based research organisation, “Illicit Financial flows from Developing Countries: 2001- 2010” India lost $ 123 billion in black money in the last decade (D. H. 21-02-2013). The Supreme Court has ordered that the central government should submit to it an affidavit about the extent of black money held by the Indian citizens (such as in Swiss Banks, tax havens like Isle of Man and Mauritius). The investigation process is under way. Poverty Alleviation Through Subsidies The government has been resorting to a variety of subsidies explicit and implicit with a view to alleviate the misery of the poor, though some of the subsidies are not meant for the poor. In 1997, the then Finance Minister who is also the Finance Minister now presented a White Paper on subsidies which amounted to about 14 to 15 percent of the GDP. Since then the amount of subsidies would have gone up even more, though it has not been computed as share of GDP. Including both the subsidies provided by the central and state governments, it may be now 20 percent of GDP if not more. Most of it has been appropriated by the undeserving affluent sections of the society. Another discussion paper was prepared and presented by the Finance Ministry in 2003-2004 which presented data only on central government subsidies and excluded the subsidies by the state governments. It classified subsidies as implicit and explicit, and further into merit and non-merit subsidies. The explicit subsidy was 40 percent and the implicit subsidy was 60 percent of the total subsidies and it made a detailed analysis of only the explicit subsidies. The Annual Growth Rate (AGR) of the subsidies was 11 percent during the eleven year period. AGR of the explicit subsidy was 13.2 percent and implicit subsidy was 9.7 percent. The share of implicit subsidy fell by 8 percent during the period. But the absolute size of the implicit subsidy is nearly one and half size of the explicit subsidy. The share of social services in the total subsidy (education, family welfare, water supply and sanitation, labour and employment) is only 21.2 percent whereas the share of economic services (agriculture, rural development, energy, flood control, irrigation, industry, science and technology) was 78.8 percent (Datt and Sundharam 2012). While the scope of reducing subsidy in social services is practically nil, there is considerable scope of reducing the amount of subsidy in the economic services sector, in view of the substantial benefit accruing to the better off sections of the populations. However the political will is lacking, keeping in mind the calculations of damage at the time of general elections, though a small beginning has been made recently (September 2012) by raising the prices of diesel and LPG cylinder. It may be noted that only 12 percent of diesel consumption is by public transport, and about 50 percent by trucks which transport goods both for the industry and for everyday consumption of common man such as food grains, vegetables, fruits etc. A substantial part, probably about 20 to 30 percent is consumed by the rich who use expensive cars and SUVs. Similarly there is a subsidy of approximately 50 percent on LPG cylinders, most of which is by the consumption of the affluentzi. Mukesh and Anil Ambani and other fellow billionaires pay the same price for LPG as a middle class consumer, and even a BPL poor (some BPL families have been provided free LPG connection by a few state governments) family pays, whereas the total number of LPG cylinders would be several times more per month than the latter two categories. When a cap was laid on the number of subsidised LPGs per month, 6 per family in a year (and some state governments have added additional four to six) there was a hue and cry in the media, that the ‘aam admi’ has been hit hard, and a demand by practically all the opposition political parties to roll back the restriction including the CPM which claims to speak for the poor. Probably Ambanis, Ruias, Birlas, Mittals and Bajajs, in their view, are the aam admi. It may also be mentioned here that the SEZs (Special Economic Zones, a copy of the Chinese government’s policy which is thriving on the export led growth of 10 to 12 percent of GDP) are a source of exploitation of poor farmers who are deprived of their land and livelihood by sale at less than market prices, in the name of “public interest”, forcibly by several state governments, including the then CPM government of West Bengal (Singur and Nandi Villages). Another example of implicit subsidy (though not so stated by the Government) is that, officially the rate of Corporate Tax is 33 percent, but, when adjusted after taking into account the tax benefits for many years, low interest loans of huge amounts and sale of land practically free or at nominal rates, it works out to just 19 percent (Datt and Sundharam, 2012). Since 2004-05, the “revenues foregone” (i.e. tax and other concessions to corporate companies as incentives for growth) adds upto more than Rs. 27 lakh crores. The problem about providing subsidies to the poor and weaker sections of the population is what is called euphemistically as “leakage” and should be called bluntly as corruption which is rampant at several levels of the bureaucracy, and with link up to politicians and political parties in power. It is so widespread and deeply entrenched that it would be extremely unrealistic to believe that corruption can be eliminated, not withstanding the claims of “India Against Corruption”, now disbanded and split into two- one as a political party and the other as a non-political front of social activists. It is estimated that leakage in implementing the subsidies may be about 40 to 45 percent of the total amount. This, however, is a general macro level estimate which may be as high as 50 to 60 percent according to states and sectors like fuel, food and fertilisers, the three main types of subsidies. When Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, he made a public statement to the effect that poor get only 15 percent of the government expenditure (according to my memory he said poor get 15 paise back out of a rupee they contribute to the government revenue). Whichever may be the correct quote, it is obvious that poor people are denied of their rightful share of benefits. The wealthy, the politically powerful and the government staff implementing the programmes join hands in this conspiracy. I may quote here an anecdote which I can vouch for the veracity. A government official of the Karnataka state civil service cadre, and now in the I.A. S through promotion, told his wife, who dared to enquire if he took bribe (he was then Joint Commissioner of Transport, and very close to the then Chief Minister who holds now an important cabinet post at the centre). He answered: “Yes. I take bribes; one third of the amount is spent on the village temple, one-third “goes up” and I take the remaining amount. Do not ask me again about this matter”. Note that the God is also made a party to the transaction! Recently the central government has announced that in future, it will directly contribute through cash transfer the financial assistance to the poor through Adhaar linked bank account in a phased manner in 43 districts across the country from January 2013 and later the entire country by the end of 2013. Almost all the opposition political parties except C. P. M have acquiesced in this. The progress, however, is dependent on the government’s ability to cover the entire population especially in rural and tribal areas by enrolling the people in Adhaar UID and opening bank branches to make it possible for the eligible poor population to open Adhaar-linked bank accounts to receive the cash transfers. (Recently the estimate of the central government and a study by an NGO in Bangalore slums revealed that only 30 percent of the eligible population had a bank account) and being able to handle all the procedures satisfactorily. It is doubtful whether this will succeed but it is worth trying. Expenditure on Social Sectors Social sectors include social services (health, education, housing, labour and social security, welfare of the scheduled castes and tribes, and other welfare measures) and rural and urban development. There has been hardly any analysis of the budget and plan allocations to social sectors in the literature on development. A few authors have written on the provisions for social sectors, mainly about the decade of the 1990’s, the first decade of economic reforms (Prabhu, Guhan, Sharif, etal and Mahendra Dev and Mooij) I have drawn heavily on their contributions and later adding my own analysis about the period 2001 to 2012-13. Expenditure on social sectors is included both in the budgets of the states and the central government. Social sectors are mainly the responsibility of the state governments as most of the subjects fall exclusively in the state list of the Constitution, with the exception of welfare of backward classes (S.C and S.T welfare) which is in the central list and education, after an amendment to the Constitution, is in the concurrent list. In the final analysis, even the centrally sponsored schemes are implemented by the states who may be expected to contribute approximately fifty percent of the expenditure with rare exceptions when the centre’s share may be proportionately more than half. Disproportionately larger share of expenditure on social sector and poverty alleviation are undertaken by the states because of the constitutional provisions as stated earlier (Sharif, etal). In 1995-96 there was a big jump in central allocations for education because of higher allocations to elementary education and nutrition (mid-day meal schemes in schools). States own expenditure as a ratio to the GNP shows a consistent decline from 1993-94 to 1997-98 after a rise. Combined expenditure on housing and urban development increased by 38 p.c between 1991 to 1999-2000. There was a 16 per cent increase in the provisions for the rural development in 1995-96 and subsequently a decline of 30 p.c in 1998-99. There was a noteworthy improvement, beginning from 1995-96 to 1999-2000. There was a continuous decrease from 0.47 per cent in 1991-92 to 0.19 per cent in 1999-2000, in the central govt. expenditure on rural development as a proportion of GDP. Allocation to social sectors as percentage of the total central budgetary allocation increased from 3.4 per cent to 5 per cent between 1990-91 to 2001-2002. The combined expenditure of central and state governments on social sectors as per cent of GDP from 1990-91 to 1998-99 generally decreased but was in the range of 6 to 7 per cent of GDP. There was, however, a slight increase for the next three years 1998-99 to 2000-2001, and as an average for the three years it was slightly more than 7 per cent. The combined expenditure of the centre and the states on social sectors as per cent of total expenditure showed a slight increase of about 0.75 per cent between 1990-91 (24.85 per cent) to 2000-01 (26.61 per cent). With fluctuations in between from mid- 90s (1995-96) to the end of the decade it was in the range of 26 per cent to slightly higher than 27 per cent of the total public expenditure. If we look at the composition of combined expenditure i.e. sector wise, we notice a decline of 2 per cent in education, increase in housing and urban development of about 1.5 per cent and an increase in rural development of about 2.4 per cent by the central government alone for the period of 1986-87 to 2000-01, about fourteen years. As per cent of GDP it was almost the same (about 1.60) but as percentage of aggregate expenditure it increased over the period from about 7.5 per cent to 10.24 per cent, about fifty per cent increase. Per Capita expenditure in Rs at 1993-94 prices was 113 in 1986-87 and it increased to 217 in 2000-01, a substantial increase of slightly less than double the amount over a period of 14 years. In comparison, expenditure by states for the decade of the 1990s show a slight decrease as per cent of GDP and a substantial decrease as per cent of aggregate expenditure, from 39.20 to 35.80, i.e. 3.40 per cent decrease for the whole decade. Expenditure on Social Services: Let us take a look at the budget provision and expenditure on social services, using the data available in the Economic Survey 2013 and 2012 of the Central Government, for a period of six years from 2006-07 to 2012-13. The amount for the first five years is “actual” i.e. expenditure actually incurred and the next one year is the “Revised Estimate” of the original budget provision. For 2012-13 it is the Budget Estimates, which will be revised in the next year, based on expenditure incurred. For the first two years the expenditure* on social services including rural development as a proportion of expenditure of the central government was 12 per cent and 13.64 percent respectively, and for the next three years it was between 15 to 17 per cent. When we take into account the entire government expenditure on social services only (Central and State) as a proportion of GDP for the first two years it was in the range of 5.5 to 6.0 per cent which increased approximately to 7 per cent in the next five years. We notice a significant increase of about an average of 2 per cent over the period of next five years. As a proportion of total expenditure of central and states it was about 22 per cent during the first two years, increased to 24 per cent in the next two years and further increased to more than 24 per cent on an average for the subsequent three years i.e. (2010-11 to 2012-13). I have not been able to collect accurate statistics on the total expenditure on social services plus poverty alleviation including such programmes like MGNREGA for the year 2013-14. Rough estimate by me reveals an approximate total expenditure of about 23 to 24 per cent of the total central government expenditure of which about half was on welfare including poverty alleviation which can be considered significant. I had made an estimate of the plan allocations for the social sectors including poverty alleviation in 1985-86, which was 8 per cent of the total plan allocations. It did not include expenditure on employment guarantee programme which was not in existence then on a nation-wide basis, though it was being tried in Maharashtra for some years and the expert opinion on its benefit was divided. It also did not include expenditure on education and health. As mentioned before approximately half of the central government budget proposals on social sector is on welfare and poverty alleviation which is a substantial increase over the expenditure during mid-1950’s. Conclusions: An overview of allocations and actual expenditures on social sectors for the past two decades leads us to the following conclusions:
There are a plethora of social sector schemes introduced over the years, ad hoc introduction, perhaps due to political considerations and there is a considerable overlap, and wastage, apart from the problem of “leakage” (corruption). There has not been any performance audit by CAG or other government / NGO / academic analysts as was done for I.R.D.P some decades ago. Very recently CAG made sample audit of ‘Farm Loan Waiver Schemes’ in six states which revealed mis-utilisation of benefits by the ineligible rich farmers and denial of benefits to the eligible indebted farmers, even when some of them were included in the list prepared by the banks.* As rightly observed in the latest economic survey 2013, there is a considerable scope for reviewing all the schemes and prepare a co-ordinated properly targeted comprehensive schemes. “Outlays have to be converted into outcome”. There is, however, some indirect evidence of impact of MGNREGA and other social sector schemes. There is severe scarcity of immigrant labourers in states like Haryana and Punjab. Scarcity of labour in several states due to MGNREGA has pushed up significantly agricultural wages, both nominal and real since 2006 to 2010, according to the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Poverty Eradication In 1971, ‘Garibi Hatao’ was coined as a political slogan (it is believed that Sanjay Gandhi coined this slogan) and it paid rich dividend to the then ruling political party at the time of parliamentary election after the liberation of East Pakistan which became Bangladesh. Subsequently, there was no serious attempt to implement this commitment of eradicating poverty. After the post-emergency election when a new government was formed with Morarji Desai as Prime Minister, the Planning Commission was re-constituted. Raj Krishna, then member of the new Planning Commission and a wellknown economist made an emphatic statement “we have the necessary knowledge to eliminate poverty”. After the short lived Janata Party government and a mid-term election which brought back Indira Gandhi to power again nothing was heard of eliminating the poverty. Since then several governments- coalition governments of short duration of less than a year and one six year non Congress National Democratic Alliance government, (1998-2004) and subsequently two U. P. A. coalition governments have been in power with the well known economist- Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, credited with taking the courageous step of opening up the economy for globalisation etc as Finance Minister during 1990-91. There is no sign of poverty being reduced significantly let alone being eradicated. The trickle down effect following a high period of growth has not taken place as widely advertised by the pro-globalisation economists including the present Prime Minister and the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission (M. S. Ahluwalia). As already mentioned ratio of poverty is high, 30 percent in 2010 according to official estimate, though all the other indicators such as declining GDP from nearly 9 percent to 5 percent in 2012-13, very high rate of general inflation and food inflation ranging between 7 to 9 percent, low rate of industrial production, loss of jobs and high rate of unemployment around 7 percent, large number of self employed (250 Lakhs) becoming either daily wage earners (220 Lakhs) or unemployed indicate that ratio of poverty would have increased substantially. Over several decades, several governments which have been in power at the centre have generally tried to alleviate poverty by a variety of “populist” measures such as loan waiver to the farmers and a number of welfare measure (43 are mentioned) such as health insurance, subsidised housing programmes, loans and scholarships to students etc and the most prominent of all the MGNREGA which has, as officially claimed about 27 crores people registered under this programme which is about 25 percent of the eligible rural population. Though MGNREGA is better than the other welfare schemes in terms of its potential to lift the poor above the poverty line, it is very doubtful whether in reality this can take place. Not only because of “leakage” which is sought to be plugged by Adhaar linked cash transfers into beneficiary bank accounts, but also the problem of long term provision of sustained employment to the same beneficiaries. So the following observation, by Sukhmoy Chakravarty made in 1987 is valid even today: “A redistributive programme is unlikely to work in isolation from the pattern of growth that India is able to generate. Regularities that characterize the circular flow of income would suggest that inefficiencies may be implied by anti-poverty programmes which do not improve the operating efficiency of production processes. While the first round of putting the money into the hands of the needy may relieve dire necessities for a while, the effect tends to be highly transitory in character as such programmes do not improve the capability to earn more on a steady basis. While some supplementary consumption in relation to selected target groups has a proper place in a country like India, the more pressing necessity is still for investment for both material and human capital formation”. A similar view has been expressed in 2007 by Shankar Acharya who was the Chief Economic Advisor to the Finance Ministry during the latter part of the 1990s- the beginning decade of the reform era. Polity When India adopted the Constitution with a democratic republican form of government based on election through universal adult franchise, few people in the west gave it a chance of success, ranging from Winston Churchill in U. K. to Selig Harison in U. S. A (author of India- Dangerous Decades). Our own reputed social historian Ramachandra Guha called it a greatest gamble in history. But the gamble paid off. Democracy has not only survived the “dangerous decades” but it has been a great success, notwithstanding the brief nineteen month internal emergency imposed by the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. It may be noted here that even this ‘aberration’ was within the constitutional framework and legal provision. The Supreme Court refrained from expressing its opinion on the constitutional issue when the matter came before it after the post emergency election. Free and fair elections have been held periodically and there has been orderly change of governments. Voting age has been reduced further from 21 to 18 years. People across the country from all sections of the population participate enthusiastically in the election process. Average percentage of voters over the years has been around 58 percent and at times above 60 percent, well above the rate in some of the advanced countries. The Election Commission which became a multi-member commission since 1991 has proved to be fearless, fair and very competent in discharging its duties, and does not hesitate to assert itself when confronted with issues of violations of model code of conduct for election or malpractices at the time of voting, counting and declaration of results. The performance of our Election Commission has won international praise. However, there are several disturbing trends. Large amount of money (mostly black) spent on electioneering, paid news which is causing serious concern to the Election Commission and the Press Council of India, criminalisation of elected representatives- {currently 124 M. P.s of the Loka Sabha have multiple criminal charges against them, according to the former Chief Election Commissioner S. Y. Quereshi}, indecorous behaviour inside the Parliament and Legislatures, preventing them from functioning (last monsoon session of Parliament ended without transacting any business because of the obstruction from the opposition parties), cash for question scam, corruption charges against central cabinet ministers and some former chief ministers of U.P., Karnataka, and Jharkhand etc. Important bills are passed in a hurry without debate both in the Parliament and State Legislatures, a recent case being the passing of a bill for establishing 13 private universities in Karnataka within a matter of an hour or two. While all political parties after losing power following an election, parrot like state that they would play the role of a constructive opposition, their conduct is quite contrary. Gone are the days when a few M. P.s like Mahavir Tyagi and Pheroze Gandhi both from the ruling Congress Party during the Nehru era and Madhu Limaye, from the opposition Socialist Party during post-Nehru era would come well prepared for the debate, and managed to corner the government on some issue or the other (e.g. L. I. C share purchase scandal involving Mundra, which ultimately led to the resignation of T. T. Krishnamachari, then finance minister though he was personally not involved). The governments also, whichever the party or parties in coalition being in power, avoid taking prompt action against ministers when serious corruption charges are made which indicate prima facie that the charge needs to be taken seriously e.g. against the D. M. K minister at the centre and the chief minister and several cabinet ministers in the present BJP government of Karnataka. There is also the case of “cash for vote” in the Parliament which is still being pursued by the C.B.I. There have been scholarly assessments of our democratic functioning by well known political scientists like Rajni Kothari, Atul Kohli and Javed Alam etc. A brief summary of their views will be presented. Rajni Kothari has expressed concern about the gradual withdrawl of the state from performing its functions on behalf of the people, especially vulnerable masses, and he was apprehensive of the role of the international political forces and financial vested interests, following the globalization and privatisation. According to him “the modern state was conceived as an instrument of social change and in order to carry out this role, it was (along with institutions like executive and judiciary) supposed to be autonomous of dominant interests- the private sector and its international purveyors trying to influence economic decisions. To-day both the vision of democratic and self-reliant nation building and the conception of a positive purposive state as the principal instrument of carrying out that vision are in disarray.” (Kothari 1991) It should be remembered that he was writing at the beginning- in fact the very first year- of the economic reforms i.e. 1991. By and large his predictions have been proved right, when we look at the political scene today, after two decades of globalization and privatisation. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is given a grand welcome and a variety of economic decisions have been taken to suit their interests. Javed Alam after a major study of all the elections from 1970-71to 2004, takes a favourable, optimistic view. To quote: “During the nationalist movement, equality became a driving force of democracy in India. The quest for it remains, in diverse ways, the driving force in the survival of democracy”. Stating that it has not achieved all that it set out to achieve, he says that “the question rather is what has allowed democracy to survive well over 50 years. It has not only survived, but has done so with full and equal legal citizenship. Democracy has expanded enormously, and electoral process has witnessed a phase of deepening among the very people who are not best equipped to practice democracy in all its normative details.” Alam, writing fifteen years after the economic reforms (and after 15 years of Kothari’s analysis and predictions) strikes an optimistic note. But he is also critical about many aspects of our democracy. Myron Weiner, prominent political scientist who studied the course of Indian democracy for several years, considered (as quoted by Paul Brass) child labour and high rate of illiteracy as the greatest blots on India’s democracy. Brass, another well known political scientist described himself as non-celebratory and takes a “gloom and doom view” of India’s democratic development. He has listed the following as blots on India’s democracy. “Poverty is first, but not as poverty as an abstraction, not poverty as counting of numbers of people below an imaginary line but poverty as a way of life that one cannot escape and that dramatically constrains one’s abilities and relations with the non-poor; and second, associated with poverty comes illiteracy, continuing increasing illiteracy that makes a mockery of the idea of equality in Indian society, especially for women. Third, inequality itself, the persistence at all levels of Indian society that emphasizes difference between and deference of the low to the high. Fourth, the violence of everyday life against women in the family, to the poor and the other unprotected persons perpetrated by the police including state terror and in the countryside the criminal violence of so called Hindu-Muslim riots. Fifth, corruption pervasive, systematic, graded, corrosive of all institutions and agencies in Indian society in which all are implicated from the lowest to the highest in Indian society. Sixth and related to all the above, the continued diversion of the resources from any desirous attempt to satisfy the basic human needs of the population to big dams, nuclear power plants, military projects, nuclear weapons and delivery systems. To this list I may add Project Mars (Rs. 45000 Crores), Common Wealth Games, purchasing Dream Airliner Airbus planes by Air India which cost Rs. 30,000/- crores etc, infusion of capital to public sector banks to meet Basel III norms, who later lend crores of rupees to the billionaires like Vijay Mallya, whose King Fisher Airlines owes Rs 7500 crores to a consortium of 17 banks. It has not made any profit since its inception and has not paid any interest so far, and yet no legal, penal action is being initiated. He has not even paid the salaries of the staff for eight months and has failed to deposit TDS (Tax deducted at source) of more than 79 crores to the Income Tax Department and a belated attempt is being made to recover the TDS amount due now (in January 2013). Compare this with the loans to farmers who are harassed for non-payment of loans and who have committed suicide, and the total number is estimated to be 2,71,000. The success of India’s democracy was assessed by several scholars- Indian and Western in an anthology edited by Atul Kohli published in 2001. There is an excellent essay review of the book by Ashok Pankaj in E.P.W (Oct 2002). As I could not access this book and read, I am presenting briefly the views of some well known authors from the review (quoted by A. Pankaj). Kohli makes a distinction between procedural democracy and substantial democracy and then observes that procedural democracy- constitutional and political arrangements for sharing of power, status and dignity, has been successful (five decades of periodic elections in which all political offices are contested, universal adult suffrage, freedom of press, expression, association and assembly, replacement of Congress political party in power by other political parties). The reviewer disagrees with the artificial division of democracy as procedural democracy and substantive democracy, which he calls as trivializing democracy and argues that “democracy constitutes both procedures and substance. Procedures and instruments are tools to achieve substantive democracy that is to ensure not merely equal opportunities but equal capacity and capabilities to participate in the process of governance. Politicisation of poverty (Garibi Hatao) and mobilization of the poor have no doubt helped in broadening of social base of Indian democracy, but non-fulfillment of democratic aspirations of a political society may prove difficult to manage politically”. Rudolph and Rudolph stated that “the weakening of the political executive, and recurrent political instability in the 1990s have not debilitated the basic constitutional designs of India’s federal democracy. On the contrary, new political roles assumed by the President, Judiciary (I may add overactive judiciary), and the Election Commission not only helped in putting vigour and vitality into the key federal institutions which were dwarfed by strong executive during the regimes of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, but have also helped in transformation from an interventionist to a regulatory state”. Pankaj while agreeing that the above developments mentioned by Rudolph and Rudolph have strengthened Indian democracy, states that but weakening of political executive and overburdened judiciary are serious dangers to democracy in India. Recent data for the past fifteen years about the electoral verdict concerning the general elections to the Lok Sabha and the State assemblies provide us with some insights about the political changes taking place in the country. Out of 30 States, in nine large states (A.P, Odisha, Assam, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar) and seven small states (Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Tripura, Manipur, Nagaland, and Chattisgarh) state governments belonging to different national and regional parties were voted into power for the second or third consecutive terms - five of them for three or four consecutive terms (Delhi, Gujarat, Assam, Odisha and Tripura). After a period of political instability during the 1989-90 and 1996-98, four governments in less than four years, two coalition governments have completed their tenures- N.D.A and U.P.A. The U.P.A government was voted back into power for the second consecutive term in 2009 and is likely to complete its tenure of five years. There is some speculation that U.P.A-II may not complete its term after Trinamool Congress about a year ago and DMK very recently left the U.P.A coalition at the Centre. The Prime Minister however expressed confidence in an interaction with the press in Durban, South Africa on the 28th March, that his government will complete its tenure and the election to the Lok Sabha would be held as scheduled in May 2014. He then remarked that coalition governments are unable to deal with some issues which give the impression of instability (emphasis supplied). There is some element of truth and factual support for his opinion. As I write this (30th March 2013) I am inclined to agree with his prediction, though we shall know finally whether he was right only in May 2014. Summarising the data presented above and its analysis, we find that during the last fifteen years (in the case of the states twenty years or more) there has been political stability in the entire country, with the exception of two states- Karnataka and Jharkand where coalitions broke up, governments lost power, and there was a short spell of President’s rule followed by midterm election. There have been five Chief Ministers in ten years in Karnataka- an average of two years per Chief Minister- in fact less than one year for two Chief Ministers. The population of these two states is about seven percent of the total population of India. The sixteen states where the governments were voted back into power for two or three consecutive terms have a population of 51 per cent i.e. the half the population of the country and it will be 60 p.c. if we include West Bengal and Tamil Nadu where change of government took place only during the last two years, after a consecutive victory for seven times (W. Bengal) and two consecutive victory in Tamil Nadu. During the past fifteen years (1998-2013) there has been political stability at the centre supporting Alam’s theses of deepening of democracy in India. There has been political stability in the last twenty five years ever since the beginning of the coalition era at the centre in 1989-90 except for a brief period in 1996-98. Barring five brief tenures of government beginning with the Janata Dal government of V. P. Singh, followed by three month Chandrsekhar government and later in the latter part of the nineties nine month old Deve Gowda and Gurjral governments and a one year NDA government which fell after a ‘no confidence’ motion was passed by one vote, three coalition governments, one of NDA and two of UPA- have completed their five year tenure- even after a determined effort was made by BJP and Left Parties to get a ‘no confidence’ motion passed against the first UPA government over the nuclear deal with USA, which did not succeed. The means adopted by the ruling coalition was questionable, if not condemnable. At the level of states the era of one party rule ended in 1966 with the defeat of Congress party and the victory of DMK led by Anna Durai. After a series of coalition governments which were formed and then thrown out in U.P and Bihar in the north- called Samyukta Vidhayak Dal government, gradually there is stability at the level of states also. Either one party majority governments (in U.P, W. Bengal, Odisha, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu) or coalition governments of a national party and regional party (Maharashtra, Bihar and earlier in Odissha) have completed their tenures. Some of them have been voted into power consecutively for two or three tenures (Assam, Delhi, Gujarat, Odisha for three tenures, Punjab, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh for two tenures) proving the armchair psephologists penchant for attributing electoral defeats to “anti-incumbency” factor as irrelevant. Voters, especially the middle class and the poor, have generally disapproved infighting by the politicians, after a particular party or “coalition” (Janata party was really a coalition) was voted to power. They want the legislators and members of parliament to attend to their responsibility of providing stable and good government e.g. defeat of the Janata government at the centre in 1980 election and the defeat of the BJP government in May 2013 in Karnataka. The arbitrary misuse of power under Article 356 of the constitution by the Central governments by dismissing a state government enjoying a majority in the legislature because an opposition party was in power in the state, has been curbed by the Supreme Court, by now historic judgement in the case of Bommai Vs. Union Government. Subsequently judgements in the case of Bihar and another state (Jharkhand?) have put a further brake on the “loyal” governors trying to usher in a party to power which did not have proven majority of the MLAs of the state legislature. And finally, the era of coalition governments at the centre has further curtailed the temptation of dismissing a state government, because the ordinance has to be approved by a majority in both the houses of parliament. A pernicious feature of the political scene after 1980 when Mrs. Gandhi was voted to power at the centre is the epidemic of defections either voluntarily or engineered by the political party lacking a majority, though voted as the single largest party. This was dubbed as the era of “Aya Ram and Gaya Ram” which began in Haryana when the entire legislature party which was in power - the Bhajan Lal government of the Janata party, defected to the Congress party fearing dismissal by Mrs. Gandhi, and the Supreme Court until then had not passed any judgement on this issue. Prominent cases of this type include P. V. Narasimha Rao’s minority government at the centre by breaking the Telugu Desam party in the parliament allegedly by huge payment of bribes, Mulayam Singh by breaking the Bahujan Samaj legislature party to secure two-thirds majority of the MLAs, as required under the amended anti-defection law and a new innovative feature initiated by the BJP in Karnataka- called “Operation Kamal” enticing the opposition MLAs to resign from the assembly and contest the bye-election on BJP ticket- with an offer of ministerial berth, after winning the bye- election. BJP, thus managed to get a majority, alongwith the support of six independent MLAs. This description- somewhat long and detailed points out even “procedural democracy” was undermined, and it is not a complete success in the true spirit of democratic multi-party election procedure. Finally, the tendency towards a “unitary” form of government not envisaged by the makers of the Constitution, through the control of the party machinery where decisions are taken by a caucus, called the “High Command” with no inner party democracy in any political party, except the C.P.M and C.P.I., and the single party majority enabling the centre (when it controlled both Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha) to use its power arbitrarily both at the centre and at the level of states, has been curbed effectively by a series of Supreme Court judgements. The decline of the two national parties, who are compelled to form a coalition government with several parties joining the government or supporting from outside, as is the case now, the UPA-2 government which survives on outside support after the Trinamool Congress earlier and the DMK very recently withdrew support (March 2013). Now the regional political bosses, succeed in arm-twisting the central government with threats of withdrawal of support. While this may be a matter of concern in terms of effective, good governance, it has its positive side, in the sense, in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic country with a vast diversity, the majority is compelled to yield to the pressures of a “vote-bank” politics as it is called. It degenerates at times into what is called “identity politics”, whether caste or religion. Christophe Jafferlot has called Indian democracy as “casteist democracy”, which plays a positive role depending upon circumstances. Having surveyed the political scene since 1948, Ramachandra Guha concluded (2007) that “India is fifty percent democratic and eighty percent united”. In the light of our discussion above, we may modify Guha’s rating of democracy and conclude “India is sixty percent democratic and eighty per cent united”. Another observer of the Indian political terrain- an eminent economist, and also a commentator on current affairs’ S.L. Rao, recently concluded his article with the following observations: “India has some of the forms of democracy but not the content. Things have improved of late ... Our democracy will take decades before the form and substance improves *(D.H 5-3-2013). Judiciary In the initial phase after the adoption of the constitution, the higher echelons of the judiciary, the supreme court and the high court tended to be conservative in their interpretation of the Constitution and legislative measures enacted by the Parliament and the State Assemblies which led to a large number of constitutional amendments in a few decades. However, in recent years there is a progressive trend in judicial decisions, some “straying” too far as to give the impression of encroaching upon the executive territory of policy making and execution. This judicial activism is seen in a variety of areas like environmental protection, prevention of corruption, laying down guidelines for preventing sexual harassment in offices, direction to initiate a drug policy to make the essential drugs affordable to ordinary people , even setting a deadline for the starting of a new train and the disposal of garbage, suggesting deployment of women constables in mufti at public places like bus stand and railway stations to provide security to women and save them from molestation etc. The innovation of a judicial practice of Public Interest Litigation, which was initiated by the then Chief Justice of India, P. N. Bhagwati and has now become a widespread activity claiming to speak for the public interest and working on their behalf. The narrow and rigid interpretation of “Locus Standi” was relaxed and a post card or even newspaper report could be the basis of judicial process of redressing a grievance concerning the people especially the weaker sections of society. While the public at large have welcomed the new judicial activism, some jurists have expressed concern that the judiciary not only may be encroaching on the powers of the executive but also pronouncing judgments in areas where they have little technical knowledge and are ignorant of the ramifications of implementing their orders. Recently retired Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia advised caution on these issues, to the fellow judges. The Presidential Reference regarding the policy concerning allocation of natural resources such as 2G spectrum and coal blocks allotment and the subsequent unanimous opinion of the five judge constitution bench on that issue, has tried to clarify the roles of executive and judiciary in a balanced constitutionally correct perspectives. The appointment of special Investigative Team (S.I.T), as in the case of Godhra massacre in Gujarat, C. B. I investigation under the supervision of the Supreme Court, the appointment of Centrally Empowered Committee (CEC) on mining and the constitution of a forest bench at the Supreme Court to hear environment related cases are worth mentioning as indicative of the new trend in the functioning of the judiciary. On the other side, the problem of corruption in the higher echelons of the judiciary not to speak of the lower ones- leading to the resignation of two high court judges- one of them a Chief Justice of a High Court, and the serious charge by the senior Advocate of Supreme Court, Prashant Bhusan that eight out of the sixteen former CJIs were corrupt and as a result facing the serious charge of contempt of judiciary, have raised the issue of judicial accountability and transparency in the selection and appointment of judges to the high courts and the supreme court. Also, large number of pending cases, three crores which is causing much distress to the litigants. Justice delayed is justice denied. Development and Environment: Destruction of forests and damage to the environment began during the colonial rule with the commercialization of agriculture and forests. Land was diverted for growing of tobacco and cotton to supply cheap raw materials to the factories in England. Forests were converted into tea and indigo plantations, and as a source of income to the government by cutting trees and selling timber for a variety of commercial use. This process, however, not only continued after independence, the rate of destruction increased steeply. Between 1854 and 1952, nearly 100 years the tree cover had come down from 40 percent to 22 percent of the land area. During a short period of 36 years- 1952 to 1988 it came down to 12 percent. The data generated from the Remote Sensing Agency has indicated that the green cover to be 19 to 20 percent of the land area between 1988 and 2007, which was interpreted (Datt and Mahajan) as stabilizing.* While no data has been made available since then, available information from various sources indicates further deterioration of the green cover. The data reported in the media about Karnataka and the report of the Centrally Empowered Committee (CEC) appointed by the Supreme Court support the above observation. Illegal and indiscriminate mining in Karnataka, Goa and Odisha and some other states, and the consequent severe degradation of the soil, led the Supreme Court to suspend mining in these states temporarily. The damage to the bio-diversity is said to be 50 percent and irreversible. An expert committee of the C.I.I (Confederation of Indian Industries) stated that “Indians are using almost twice of what the country’s natural resources can sustain (or twice its bio-capacity, the capacity of nature to sustain Indians) has declined sharply by almost half in the last four decades or so” (quoted in Shrivastava and Kothari, 2012). Overexploitation of ground water for double or multiple cropping in some states like Punjab and Haryana, has resulted in the lowering of the water table and also made water unsafe for drinking. It has been officially stated in the Parliament that nearly in one-thirds of the districts in the country, the ground water is not safe for drinking. Widespread and unnecessary use of non-biodegradable plastic has created the problem of garbage disposal and health hazards to the animals (cows) and ultimately to human beings. Recently some states have taken and some others are contemplating to take measures either to ban totally the use of plastic bags or regulate its use by laying down certain norms regarding the thickness and bio-degradability of plastic bags and packaging materials. There is also the reported danger of high level of radiation from mobile towers, located in the residential areas and a committee of experts has been appointed by the government of Karnataka to study the problem and make recommendations. House sparrows, frogs and a variety of birds and animal species have either become extinct or on the verge of extinction. The Tehelka magazine listed, week by week, the threatened species of birds and animals which numbered about a total of 40. Vehicular pollution in over-populated mega cities has created atmospheric pollution of a very high degree above the permissible level and as always, the slum dwelling poor and other vulnerable sections of society are the worst affected, by being denied open spaces near their locality and even being prevented from using public parks. The incidence of respiratory diseases like asthma, pulmonary T.B and C. O.P.D seems to be increasing in many of the big cities. Social Equality Broadly speaking gender equality and equality among different social strata of the society may be included in this definition. In our country, generally social equality is discussed in the context of varna based caste hierarchy and in particular the lowest, traditionally referred to as untouchables, later relabeled as scheduled castes (S.C) in the constitution. Gandhiji had referred to them as “Harijan” - children of god. These groups now prefer to identify themselves as Dalits and I will use as necessary, both the terms Dalits and Scheduled Castes. We notice two different trends in regard to the improvement of the status of scheduled castes. At one level, the number of cases registered under the Anti-untouchability Act, have shown an increase over the years but actual conviction rate of cases registered is very low. At another level, there has been some relaxation regarding restrictions about social mixing between upper and lower castes especially in the urban areas in public places like offices, transport, restaurants etc. However, there have been extreme violent actions against Dalits, in the name of “Honour killings” especially in Haryana and Punjab, when a bride from upper caste marries a dalit. Honour killings have also been reported from Odisha and Mysore, though rare. Mass atrocities against a large number of Dalits in a village in Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu recently by the O.B.C Vanniyar community was reported though the media largely ignored this incident. Dalit houses were burnt after forcing them out of their houses, while the police were mute spectators. Similar mass atrocities have been reported in the past from Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra. Rape, gang-rape and sexual assault have also been reported which will be dealt with separately under gender inequality. Though this may be considered as part of political arena, I may briefly mention here that during the post emergency process of forming a new Janata Party government in 1977, there were three contenders for the post of the leader, who would be later Prime Minister: Morarji Desai, Jagjivan Ram (Dalit) and Charan Singh, a Jat. Acharya Kriplani and Jayaprakash Narayan were entrusted with the task of selecting the leader. After a wide consultation among the newly elected M.Ps, when it seemed that Babu Jagjivan Ram was likely to be chosen, Charan Singh is reported to have withdrawn from the race, lending his support to Morarji Desai with a remark - “I would rather serve under a Brahmin than under an untouchable”. Subsequently, Morarji Desai was chosen “unanimously”. It may be noted that Jagjivan Ram had long experience (30 years) continuously since 1947 as a cabinet minister and was known as an efficient administrator and a very able, tactful parliamentarian, who could win over the opposition by conciliatory remarks and a sense of humour. He was eminently qualified to become the Prime Minister. His daughter, Meira Kumar, was elected unanimously and became the first woman speaker of the Lok Sabha in May 2009. A positive trend, perhaps, Mayavati, a dalit woman became the Chief Minister of U.P- the largest and very backward state, twice in a short-lived coalition government and finally for the third time in 2007, entirely on her own, as the unquestioned leader of Bahujan Samaj Party, with a very comfortable majority and thus made history. It is unfortunate that she squandered the popular mandate, by erecting statues of her own, changing the names of the districts and got involved in a serious corruption charge, known as Taj Corridor case and has been acquitted recently by the supreme court on procedural ground and may face a new C.B.I enquiry. Briefly it may be stated that there has been a change positively speaking, whereby the intermediate castes like Yadavs, Kurmis, who benefited from land reforms and gradually gained political power in some of the northern states and also in some southern states like Mysore (now Karnataka) and Madras, have managed to dilute the concentration of political power which was hither to the preserve of the upper castes/ classes and acquire considerable share of this power, with caste based political parties and what is called as “vote bank” politics, forming a coalition with minorities and some marginalized lower or lowest caste groups. This is evident in the political changes that have taken place since mid- 1960s in Tamil Nadu and later in U.P and Bihar after the 1980s. The Constitution provides one of the major instruments for achieving social equality by reservation of positions for S.C. and S.T. members in state legislative assemblies and parliament. There was not much overt opposition to this provision at that time, though some sections of the political parties were lukewarm to this idea, if not opposed to it. Also jobs and admission to educational institutions for S.C.s and S.T.s were reserved including the I.A.S and prestigious professional institutions in the field of medicine, engineering and business management. However, there were very strong and even violent protests when the V. P. Singh government announced the decision in 1989 for implementing the Mandal Commission recommendation for reservation of jobs for the Other Backward Communities (O. B. C.s). The decision was challenged in courts and after many years a five judge constitution bench of the Supreme Court upheld the government decision, with a cap of 50 percent total reservation of jobs in government. Right now the proposed bill to provide quota for promotions in the jobs of the central government has been vehemently opposed, though the Rajya Sabha has passed the Constitutional Amendment Bill very recently (December 2012) and it has to be passed by the Lok Sabha, and two thirds of the state assemblies to become effective. The Bill could not be presented in the Lok Sabha by an opposition political party which adopted by now familiar tactic of shouting and entering the well of the Lok Sabha. The policy of achieving social equality through reservation has been debated for a long time in the media and academic circles, especially after the reservation for O.B.Cs was announced. Many academicians including such well known political scientists like Rajni Kothari, Ghanshyam Shah and D. L. Sheth have broadly supported this decision, while recognizing some problems in its implementation, A few social scientists, notably Andre Beteille have opposed it. Beteille has been a critic of the reservation policy for a long time, even for the S.C and S. T. population. While he supports equality of opportunity for them, with “affirmative action” to support the disadvantaged sections of the population, he considers the attempt to bring about equality of result through reservations as ethically unjustified and harmful to the society- what he calls as the undermining “Institutional wellbeing” which he does not define, but says that everybody understands intuitively what that means (Beteille 1991). There is no doubt that a serious ethical and philosophical problem is involved in the policy of reservations or “Quotas” as it is popularly called which in essence refers to the injustice to the present generation by punishing them for the injustice committed by their forefathers. As regards the criticism about “Merit” being undermined and the consequent damage to the well being of society by reservations, in particular to the admissions to the medical colleges, it is conveniently overlooked that those who purchase seats in these institutions by paying exorbitant fees or donations have by-passed the merit criteria and would equally be dangerous to the social and institutional well being. Also, while there may be some relaxation in the marks to be obtained for admission to educational institutions and recruitment to civil services, there is no relaxation in the standards set for passing the examinations. Finally, very important service positions whether in the armed forces or in the civil services is made by a process of selection without consideration of reservation such as the appointments committee of the central cabinet presided over by the Prime Minister. Not even seniority of service is to be the criteria for appointments to high positions and the Supreme Court has upheld this procedure. Status of Women Traditionally for thousands of years women have been discriminated against in comparison to men, and were denied the right of education, irrespective of their caste status. After independence their condition has improved in some respects but not in all respects. Their life expectancy has not only improved substantially, it is now according to 2011 census, slightly better than males. The literacy rate and adult literacy rates have also improved for girls and adult women. But the gender gap i.e. rate for boys and girls though decreasing gradually from about 23 to 24 percent since 1991 to about 17 percent (in 2011) it is still very high. Women continue to get lower wages than men, about 62 percent of the wages of men and their rate of participation in the rural areas is more than the males because of the low wages. Since the reforms era there is not only feminization of the work force in rural areas, there is also feminization of poverty. The second phase of women’s movement which began in the 1970s has made a limited gain in certain areas like focussing on the dowry deaths, sexual harassment at work place, right to record the mother’s name in school and official records as against the earlier requirement of only the father’s name etc. Women have also broken the male barrier in several areas. Some of them have become commercial airline pilots. A few women have been selected for Indian Police Service and have risen to the high ranks in several state cadres (Kiran Bedi being the first), have been appointed as foreign secretaries and ambassadors to important counties or to the U.N. bodies though no one has been appointed so far as cabinet secretary at the centre or member of the Central Election Commission. Three women have become chief ministers of three major states, by winning the elections through the regional political parties started or controlled by them, including the largest and politically important state of U.P. Women have also been appointed Chief Justices of High Courts and judges of Supreme Court, and currently there is a woman appointed as an Additional Solicitor General of India. A woman was elected as the President of India, who completed her tenure recently. Currently, the speaker of the Lok Sabha is a woman, the first such election, though two women have held the position of the Vice Chairman of the Rajya Sabha. Three women painters have made great reputation in that field, Amrita Sher Gill, Anjolie Ela Menon and Aparna Caur. Several women have also become well known litterateurs, winning prestigious literary prizes like Jnanapith awards and Kendriya Sahitya Academy prizes such as Indira Goswami, Amrita Pritam and Mahashweta Devi etc. This is one side of the story- a positive achievement. There is the darker side of the women’s status. They have been subjected to sexual assaults such as rape, gang rape outside the home. Latest gruesome episode of a physiotherapist gang-raped in a moving bus at Delhi who died on 23rd December 2012 at a Singapore hospital has received prominent media coverage, and spontaneous protests of hundreds of women in Delhi. There has been a case of girl raped in a shop in Bangalore, also recently. Additionally there have been reports of rape and gang- rape in the family by the father, step father, brother, uncle etc of very young girls of 13 or 14 years. Since 27th November 2012, three such cases from Kerala and one from Karnataka have been reported in the newspapers, which did not receive much public outrage, protests and ministerial pronouncements as in the case of gang rape of the young physiotherapist. There has also been a case of gang rape of a school going girl in Bihar who has not received the medical treatment and public sympathy she deserved. (cf Sen Appendix-III) So the contribution of women’s movement is restricted to a small section of women of the upper classes and that too in urban areas. A large number of women from the lower castes/ classes continue to be exploited sexually and economically in the rural areas, with little hope of protection from the much publicized “civil society”. The media debate with several statements of prominent politicians and public personalities – civil society leaders, has been to suggest stringent laws, with more severe punishment like death sentence, appointment of fast track court and judicial commission of enquiry. Already some judges of the supreme court and a retired high court judge have said that the existing law is quite adequate. What is needed is prompt action by the police and speedy disposal of the cases by the courts, in other words effective implementation of the law. It is a characteristic of post independent India that whenever there is a major crime or violent conflict which gets huge publicity and public outrage, a judicial commission of inquiry is appointed, which gets several extensions and submits reports after an inordinately long time. All complex social/political problems tend to get trivialised as either a problem of law and order, or terrorism by “misguided youths” an overused phrase, which need to be studied by a judicial commission. Summing Up After an overview of 62 years of India’s developmental planning we may attempt a few broad conclusions. The economy which grew at a long term trend rate of 3.5 per cent for the first thirty years (1951-1981) broke through the barrier of persistent low growth and gradually began to increase to 5.5 per cent in the 80s to 6 per cent in the 90s and approximately 8 per cent during the next ten years - the first decade of the 20th century and the second decade of the reform era. During the 20 years of the reform period, there was high growth for about 8 years and low growth for seven years. For the last thirty years (1980-81 to 2010-11) the long term trend rate of growth was six percent or slightly more, depending upon the growth rate adopted for the decade of 1990s. If it is six per cent- widely quoted figure, then the rate of growth for the last thirty years would be 6.4. If, however, figure of 4.1 per cent (Shankar Acharya’s revised estimate) is adopted then it would be slightly lower than 6 per cent. Even so, this is an increase of 80 per cent over the 3.5 per cent growth of the first 30 years, impressive indeed. However, as we proceed to look at other aspects of this growth - the composition of the G.D.P by sectors and by the various states of India, a slightly different picture emerges. There is a broad geographically contiguous regional pattern of growth; high growth states in the north (Punjab and Haryana) in the west (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and all the four states in the south. The lowest growth is to be found in U.P and Bihar, the north eastern tribal states, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha. In the middle growth category are states Rajasthan, W. Bengal, Assam, Himachal Pradesh and the new state created out of M.P- Chattisgarh. On some criteria of development- gender ratio (FMR), violence against women such as “honour killings”, rape, dowry deaths and other forms of gender violence, some states like Punjab and Haryana, will have to be excluded from the first category. So also Maharashtra and Gujarat on gender ratio, malnutrition of children etc. Similarly Kerala will have to be excluded though very high on several social indicators like gender ratio, literacy, health and poverty on the ground of relatively lower G.D.P growth and a high rate of unemployment. To borrow a phrase, some of these states would be “outlier’s” to the category in which they are included. Poverty, as Richard Cassen observes “in contemporary discussions has acquired broad dimensions than just shortage of income. It refers to people’s capacities to function as full members of society: whether they enjoy access to important public goods, whether they are educated, healthy, free of insecurities of life and property and possess various basic rights and freedoms. The great bulk of discussions and measurement of poverty, though, are about income poverty. The numbers in poverty rose with the increase in population, perhaps around 300 million to-day (i.e. end of 20th century) compared with some 200 million in the early 1950s”. He takes note of the various estimates of head count ratio of poverty (HCR Poverty) and states “but exactly where the head count ratio now is, we do not know. Some where in the region of 30-35 per cent seems plausible, but it could be lower”. Having discussed the various dimensions of poverty such as employment and wages, infant and child mortality, health, fertility, literacy, education etc., he concludes: “It is not possible to add up all the positive and negative indicators of socio-economic progress in India in the 1990s, — Many of these trends have benefited poor people.— The continuance of poverty in India is due to age old problems.-all the improvements discussed above, though welcome, are nothing to be complacent about. The huge numbers of people deprived of so many of the requisites of a decent life are a disappointing reflection on India’s half century of development”. (emphasis supplied) (Cassen E.P.W July 2002). We are now in the second decade of 21st century. The situation is not significantly different than what Cassen observed at the end of the 20th century. Official estimate of poverty was 30 per cent in 2010 and it is claimed to have come down to 28.4 per cent in February 2013 (Finance Minister). On what basis this claim is made is not known. All the available evidence from official sources such as C.S.O., R. B.I and the Economic Survey 2012 contradicts the claim of reduction of poverty from 30 per cent to 28.4 per cent. GDP growth has decelerated during the last three years from 8.3 per cent to 5 per cent, which means loss of jobs of about three million, and consequent unemployment, high retail inflation which was 11 per cent in February 2013 and still higher, food inflation ranging from 12 to 14 per cent on various items of food consumption. It was 17 per cent for cereals, the staple food of the poor. So, the income poverty or HCR poverty would have increased and it may be 33 to 35 per cent of the population i.e. one third of the total population. According to the World Bank President, about 400 million people are poor in India and 8 per cent of the world’s poor population live in U.P (D.H. March 2013). Though there has been further improvement in terms of per capita income and expenditure in rural and urban areas, broadly the disparity between rural and urban consumption remains approximately the same i.e. urban consumption twice the rural per capita consumption. So also, despite significant improvements in Human Development Indicators such as literacy, life expectation, infant and maternal mortality rates, death rate, there is a very high level of poverty and inequality. Deaton and Dreze in a detailed analysis of poverty and inequality during the 1990’s, came to the conclusion that there is continuing, pervasive poverty at a high rate and it increased during the last decade of the twentieth century. They quoted the experience of China which implemented market-oriented reforms for more than twenty years which led to higher level of inequality along with a very high rate of economic growth. And India’s experience might not be different in this respect (Deaton and Dreze, E.P.W. 2002). There are several major achievements to our credit as part of our planning efforts to develop our country. No country in the world can become entirely self sufficient in terms of its needs to meet the requirements and aspirations of its people. While self-sufficiency is not a realistic goal, self reliance can be along with self sufficiency consistent with its natural and human resources, keeping in mind the sustainability of development. From a severely food deficit country in 1950s and 1960s, we became, thanks to the innovative package of agricultural policy with newly developed high-yielding hybrid variety of seeds- mainly wheat, to a lesser extent rice, we became self sufficient to feed the growing millions of population. Today our granaries are full and sadly there is considerable wastage in storage, and inefficient distribution of the food grains to feed the hungry millions. Speaking at the end of the year 1986 the then Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, and now the Prime Minister, stated that “100 per cent requirements of consumer goods and 85 per cent annual demand of the capital goods was met by the Indian industry”. Though recent statistics are not available, this progress would have been maintained and perhaps, improved further over the next twenty six years, as we embark on the Twelth Five Year plan in 2013-14. We are, however dependent on our energy needs - to the extent of 80 per cent (import of fuel) and also to a very large extent (80 p.c) dependent regarding the defence equipments of a wide variety, despite creating a ministry of Defence Production and D.R.D.O. Unsustainable Development Much hyped high growth model of development we are pursuing, especially since the past two decades of reform era, is unsustainable ecologically and financially. Most durable goods like computers, automobiles, colour TV, electric water heaters and domestic and office air conditioners consume high quantity of fuel which we import, 80 per cent in the case of oil products and 30 per cent in the case of coal, for which we have to pay in foreign exchange. There is already for several years, a balance of payment problem i.e we import more than what we export, thus drawing upon our foreign exchange reserve, which is fast depleting and may lead to a similar crisis we faced in 1990-91, compelling us to seek loan from international funding agencies which impose stringent financial conditions, called “structural adjustment”. The high GDP growth rate was achieved mainly through the very high rate of service sectors – 8 to 10 per cent growth which is mainly export dependent. Adverse international economic circumstances may lead to cutting costs by I.T. companies drastically reducing salaries which is psychologically traumatic and financially fraught with serious adverse consequences leading to un-employment or debt which is difficult to pay back. This happened during the 2008-2009 financial crisis which originated in U.S.A and spread to many countries in Europe and elsewhere. Another negative aspect of the present development model is that it is not job-creating, it is job destroying. Mechanisation of agriculture in Punjab and Haryana and also in some other states, and capital intensive, high productivity technology leads to reduced employment. The experience so far for the last twenty years of the reform era has resulted in little or no increase in employment in the organised sector, and informalisation of employment i.e. more and more people compelled to work in the informal sector- called SMSE (Small and medium scale enterprises) on low wages and mostly on contract basis with no job security and deprived of several social security benefits, such as provident fund, ESIS (health services), accident compensation etc. The labour force in the organised sector has come down numerically to 6 per cent from about 9 or 10 per cent thirty years ago. Incidentally a new word has been coined – “flexi labour force” in place of earlier term contract labour- hire and fire at will. We have also made impressive progress in the fields of science and technology such as nuclear, missile and space technology. We have became “associate members” of the prestigious “nuclear club” being courted by several developed countries who want to sell their nuclear machinery and uranium, after imposing sanctions for several decades, partly because of the global economic recession which hurt them more than us. There are also notable failures which have been dealt with in some details such as mass poverty, high level of economic inequality, unfavourable pattern of growth. Instead of labour- absorbing development, there has been labour-displacing economic growth, with either stagnant growth of employment or negligible growth of less than one percent, which has been dubbed as “jobless growth” by some writers. Also, while there has been some structural changes in the economy, it has not followed the growth model of Kuznets, which was based on the experience of the developed countries. It is a deviant pattern of growth, without completing the process of change from the primary into the secondary (manufacturing) sector and jumping in the high growth service sector- employing the highly educated and highly skilled manpower in I.T and I.T.E.S (information technology enabled) sectors of service. Finally, some international indices and India’s ranking according to those are presented below:
In all these rankings, we are behind some of our neighbouring countries on some of these indicators. Who have benefited from the high growth of economy over several decades, particularly during the two decades after the economic reforms? Lion’s share of benefit has been cornered by the top 1 per cent of the population. According to Joseph Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of I.M.F and Nobel prize winner, top 1 per cent of the population received 90 per cent of the increase in income in 2010 (D.H. 22-1-2013). Forbes list of billionaires has increased from 48 in 2010 to 55 in 2012 and they command total wealth of over 100 billion a figure higher than the estimated fiscal deficit of about $ 95 billion for the financial year 2012-13. Next to the ultra or super rich is the 360 million middle class (25 per cent of the population) and to a lesser extent another 360 million of “virtual middle class” (cf. Friedman in Appendix II). Who have not benefitted? Large sections of S. C., S.T and OBC population, population of N. E. tribal states were financially excluded, even though with impressive rankings on H.D.I. (Economic survey 2013-14). About 30 per cent of internal migrants have been excluded from the development process (UNICEF and central government report). And there are 12 per cent “hard core poor” in extreme poverty (Mahendra Dev, E.P.W, 2005). According to Dandekar and Rath, in 1971, there were 15 per cent extremely poor who were either destitute or close to destitution. Adding up all these figures and making allowance for double or triple counting, we may say that about one-third of the population has been left out of the development process and its benefits. Is this “inclusive and sustainable development” the mantra chanted in the recent plan documents, finance minister’s budget speech (2013-14) and the Prime Minister’s politically correct proclamations during the last nine years? Reviewing the development for thirty years in 1980 (Ch.2) I had noted that it was goal displacement and not goal transfer as mentioned by Dube. I reiterate that assessment after another thirty years of developmental planning (2012). Definitions of development and social development by Gunnar Myrdal, Seers and Van Nieuwenhuize were presented (in chapter 2) earlier. Myrdal’s and Nieuwenhuize’s definitions are abstract and are not amenable for assessing the developmental experience of the past sixty two years. Seers’ definition however is capable of assessment. During more than six decades of development planning what has been achieved cannot be called development. It is mis-development or can even be described as mal-development. References Books
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