Roots are dark and deep

S R Kasbekar

Finance minister Yashwant Sinha at the recent India Economic Summit talked of stepping up growth rate of the Indian economy to seven per cent “to help 200 million poor escape poverty”. Nobody need quibble with the lofty aim. The point is not so much of the imperative of growth but of its quality. The fact is India did notch up a seven per cent growth in the mid-nineties but poverty continues. The poor continue to languish. Is the expectation of a better future beyond the country’s capability to fulfill? It surely isn’t.

Dr V R Panchamukhi, the noted economist and a trade expert, at a recent seminar held by the Economics Department of Mumbai University, on ‘Current Problems of the Indian Economy’, was emphatic that much can be done if only we take a relook at growth strategy of the nineties and more fundamentally the development paradigm itself. He recalled how the late Pakistani economist Dr. Mahbub-ul-Haq championed a highly relevant development paradigm for poor countries in ‘Human Development Report’ for South Asia published every year.

Dr Panchamukhi acknowledging his debt to Dr Haq was at pains to emphasise the relevance of the human development paradigm for India’s growth experiment. Basically his thrust was on placing the development paradigm in the framework of moral values rooted in the Indian cultural ethos. Without the strong cultural rivet he thought the country was prone to bouts of instability and social upheavals. He also showed how Indian thinkers such as Kautilya in his treatise ‘ Arthashastra’ had advocated such an integrated approach evolved out of a fine balance between ‘Artha’, ‘Kama’ and‘ Moksha.’

‘Jobless growth,’ he warned, should be avoided at all cost. It is intriguing how the Keneysian ‘full employment’ objective has been given a go by. This is a dangerous and regrettable omission in a country that is flush with surplus labour.‘Ruthless growth’ relates to income inequalities and distortions in resource allocation with attendant structural disequilibria. The current malaise illustrates this fact well.‘Voiceless growth’ refers to disempowerment of weak sections of society such as women, small artisans, agricultural and landless labourers, workers in informal sectors and displaced persons through natural calamities. ‘Futureless growth’ relates to a consumer driven disproportionate draft on environmental resources and resultant pollution and other hazards. Such growth deprives future generations of their rightful claims on resources. ‘Rootless growth’ relates to destruction of historical and cultural values that are so essential to sustainable development. Dr. Panchamukhi stressed the need to evolve a development paradigm that took account of all these caveats and devise a strategy that ensured an equitable, just and sustainable development. After all ‘nations like trees grow from roots’, he quipped.