It’s Often a Choice

Going by a well-researched study conducted by The Indian Express and Indicus Analytics on how India will look ten years down the line, there are clear indications that bold and pragmatic policy formulation and consistency in pursuing the targets set will define the India of 2020. The remarkable finding is that even if no reforms take place, the country’s GDP has the potential to grow at an average annual rate of 9.6 per cent for the next 10 years. Now this is some news. However, if there are no reforms and the growth is over nine per cent, more than 250 million people, of a total population of 1.3 billion-plus, will still be very poor, and not even 100 million Indians will be graduates or postgraduates. This too is some news. So the emphasis ought to be on reforms. But the question is whether reforms would abridge the wide chasm between the rich and the poor, revolutionize education and rural life, and address the many grievances of the poor and neglected sections of society that have stoked rebellion and armed insurrections in many parts of the country. The sheen of the happening urban centres, studded with malls and multiplexes, cannot alone reflect on India’s coming of age. The man in the village must also have capabilities to celebrate that in his own way.

Some of the other results of the study in question are: 50 million more households will join the ranks of the middle class, earning between Rs 75,000 a year to Rs 10 lakh a year; about 800 million Indians will be in the middle class; average household expenditure will be twice the current levels in real terms; education, health and recreation will be among the fastest growing sectors; and penetration of consumer durables like two-wheelers, television and air coolers will be more than 80 per cent of the population by 2020. All of this is surely heartening. However, were policies to remain the same, more than 250 million people would still remain mired in poverty and less than four out of 10 Indians would be city-dwellers by the end of the next decade. If no drastic power reforms are initiated, the manufacturing sector will be the worst victim, the fallout of which in other domains cannot be overlooked. The other bad news is that though the number of illiterate people will fall by 10 million by the end of the next 10 years, that will still make India home to about 200 million illiterate citizens!  The message to Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Kapil Sibal is, therefore, loud and clear: undertake a radical education reforms exercise by setting your priorities right, informed by what the present generation of youth really needs to compete globally. The present moribundity will spell an HRD disaster.

An economically resurgent India, with the required resilience, will definitely begin to assert its position in the comity of nations and have a unique role to play in international politics — so very a function of things economic in the 21st century. Which is to say that foreign policies cannot be allowed to take shape in seclusion. They must be nuanced with an overview of policy ramifications on the economic front — frequent interaction between the country’s Finance and External Affairs ministers could prove to be defining. And all of this will be nothing but a matter of choice. Let the inspiration be the fact that the destiny of a nation as positioned as India in 2010 is more often than not a choice of the political leadership to make that happen. Do the country’s leaders have any will? THE SENTINEL