Headlines beamed this week that India’s GDP (Gross Domestic Product) has been pegged at 9.2 per cent, which called for celebrations by the newspapers. Is it really so euphoric? A doctored way of development has been the GDP linked growth, which India remains obsessed with.
GDP is the aggregate of a nation’s produces, that is, all the services and goods originating from the nation and selling domestic or internationally.
Post new economic policy, the economic policy makers have been dreaming to touch a 10 per cent GDP growth on a sustained basis, which in their view would lift the lower strata of the society by the spin-off effect. We have been very near that dream, but that spin-off has not had the intended effect so far.
The spin-offs have been in the form of more millionaires and billionaires with few of the giant Indian companies buying out big ticket companies abroad, and yes thickening of the middle class with more people sneaking into this because of the creation of more and more jobs in the services sector, which account for more than 50 per cent of GDP, which again has always been taken as a cause of concern.
Simple economics says that a country of large population like Indian and China should be stronger on the manufacturing sector, which alone has the potential to create huge employment along with unleashing innumerable entrepreneurial potential in the nation.
India just missed the bus of being the manufacturing base of the world. The reasons are aplenty.
With more than 30 per cent of the people always at the threat of starvation, being below the poverty line, which is nothing but statistical maneuvering of the pampered babus, there is reason to question the GDP driven growth of the country.
With millions of people being shelter less despite shelter being the fundamental right of the citizen as mandated by the Constitution, there is reason to ask why the babus in the cool confines of the Lutyens’ Delhi do not step into the interiors of the country to gauge the effect of their policies.
With the law and order along with judiciary still functioning in the British mould it becomes necessary to ask if the policy makers are not single mindedly focused on GDP growth rate then to deliver services as promised in the Constitution in an undiluted manner.
With thousands of children going missing each year in this country, which takes pride in calling itself a welfare state, it becomes important whether the government really cares for the people or not or is it too busy to raise a toast for the Tatas and the Mittals.
Why have not we developed happiness index or well being index so far to really gauge the impact of the policies in the real terms? The suicides of farmers along with a whole lot of farmers not able to rid themselves of the debt trap are shame that the policy makers must take on them.
Why does it take Sonia Gandhi to dash off a letter, asking to look into the issues of FDI in retail sector, which can potentially make crores of people jobless and leave people at the mercy of the oligarchs, for the government to really start looking into the issue?
Do the people need Sonia Gandhi as an ambassador within their own country?
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