India, in the last decade, has been the 2nd fastest growing nation after china. Its economy grew by an average of 7.4% per annum. But, despite registering impressive growth performance over a period of ten years, India still remains an impoverished and poverty-stricken nation. One-third of the counties population struggle everyday to even earn food to survive, leave aside the access to education, health and other basic necessities of life. It is appalling that India stands at 141st place out of 169 countries in UN’s Human Development Index report released in 2013, even behind some of the third world African countries. So, why India hasn’t been able to improve the living conditions for the people in rural areas despite recording great growth numbers on papers?
The answer to this is very simple. India, with all its clamouring about impressive growth numbers, hasn’t focused on “inclusive growth”. Inclusive growth as a basic concept focuses on equitable sharing of the benefits of the economic growth so that each and every section of the society, irrespective of its economic conditions, gets its benefits. This sadly hasn’t happened in India. Most of the development has been confined only to metros and urban areas whereas rural areas have been left behind, sulking in poverty and abjection. This inequitable distribution of the benefits has resulted in disparity of income as rich have become richer and poor have become poorer. This kind of economic disparity is hazardous as it can hamper the long term growth prospects of a nation. Huge economic inequalities also result in high corruption and plutocracy, the rule by wealthy.
The failure in achieving inclusive growth has started to haunt India as most of its rural development centric policies have begun to fail because of the ineffective implementation and huge corruption by the wealthy and powerful, thus depriving poor of the basic necessities and thereby, letting them die in poverty. Failure of the Bharat nirman Yojana, a scheme started by the govt. of India, is a perfect example of it.
Overall development of a nation can happen only when each section of the society prospers and gets chances to grow. Focusing on the growth in urban and metros only won’t make India a better place to live. It would only help upper-middle class, not the poor. It’s the interior underdeveloped regions where we have to shift our focus on. Giving poor more opportunities would improve their quality of life, which in turn would boost India’s economic growth. Apart from just creating policies and allocating funds for them, we need to ensure that policies are better implemented and their benefits are reaching to the poor. Education, health, job creation remain the areas of attention. Inclusive growth, taking everyone together is the way forward.
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