Dr. Devendra
Kothari
Population and
Development Analyst
Forum for
Population Action
“He (Dr. Kalam) wanted
India to leap out of the underdeveloped trough and eliminate the curse of
poverty through inclusive economic growth.”
Narendra Modi
Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen "A. P. J." Abdul Kalam became the 11th President of India
on 25th July 2002. The
country has never had a
more beloved president. Active till the end, he left the world in mid-speech,
as if to remind us that he still had something more to say. The shock of his
sudden passing has left a nation bereaved. India mourns his death, but will
long celebrate his life. He was an inspirational figure to
millions of people including me. He passed away
at the age of 83 on July 27, 2015.
Dr. Kalam always
said, “Don’t stop trying”
India's "missile man", as he was dubbed in
the popular press, Dr. Kalam was a rocket scientist who rose to prominence as
head of the country's successful civilian space and missile defense programmes.
He played a vital role in India's
Pokran-II nuclear tests in 1998 and he was involved in India's space programmes
and military missile development efforts. In addition, he took an interest in
well-being of the country in the field of science and technology, during his
tenure of Presidency and Post-Presidency. He also pioneered India Vision 2020, a road map for
transforming India.
In ‘India 2020: A Vision for the New Millennium’, published in 1998, Dr Kalam and his associate Y.S. Rajan examined India's
strengths and weaknesses to offer a vision of how India could be among the world's first five economic
powers in the year 2020.
But in 1998, the book was surprisingly ahead of its times. So authors published another version of the book after seventeen years in 2014 and called it: ‘Beyond 2020: Vision for Tomorrow's India’.[1] It focuses on India’s future progress in the backdrop of the existing facts and figures and the present-day situation in the country. The authors argue that a renewed policy focus is now needed to boost economic growth.
Dr. Kalam’s greatest faith was the
nation and its youth. Even in the final two hours of his life, he was sharing
his ideas with students of the Rajiv Gandhi Indian Institute of Management, Shillong as how to develop this
nation. In fact, he was an eternal believer in the power of the ignited mind of
the youth – which he termed as most powerful, on the earth, above the earth and
under the earth. To quote him: “our demographic advantage is derived from our
huge youthful population, on whose health the future of India rests.”
As we know that India has already entered
the vital window of opportunity with a growing labor force; how she uses this
potential demographic dividend will have enormous consequences for its long-run
economic performance. Recently, World Bank‘s county report noted “How India
develops its significant human potential and lays down new models for the
growth ----- will largely determine the shape of the future for the country and
its people in the years to come.” [2] Can India take
advantage of this demographic window in the next couple of decades?
Here “Beyond 2020: Vision for
Tomorrow's India” provides some inking. The book argues that one has
to enhance
the productivity. Productivity, a measure of the efficiency of the human capital, can be measured by per capita Gross Domestic Product
(GDP). [3] To quote authors:
“Instead of just looking at the GDP figures we should look at GDP per capita as
well. That is an indicator of how much a
country has empowered its people in terms of their ability to produce high-value
goods, how much wealth the individual
citizen of a country creates, which of course depends on the work environment,
the technologies a person is equipped with, his/her knowledge and skill, etc.” They further write: “The GDP per capita standings are the true
indicators of how much India has been able to empower its citizens”. Table 2
makes it clear how much progress India needs to make to be on a par with
Brazil, China and even Indonesia. India has become
the tenth largest economy in the world in terms of GDP that is the sum of total
production by all the people of a country; however, has a very low per capita
GDP. The country placed at the 148th position among the 187
countries, as per the World Bank. This is perhaps the most visible challenge. Table 1 shows that China’s GDP per capita value in 2013 was more than four and half times
that of India.
Table 1: Per capita GDP, selected Countries,
2013
|
Country
|
World Rank
|
GDP per capita (In US$)
|
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
|
Monaco
|
1
|
163,036
|
|
Norway
|
4
|
100,819
|
|
USA
|
13
|
53,143
|
|
Germany
|
22
|
45,085
|
|
Japan
|
28
|
38,492
|
|
South Korea
|
33
|
25,977
|
|
Russia
|
51
|
14,612
|
|
Brazil
|
65
|
11,208
|
|
China
|
84
|
6,807
|
|
S. Africa
|
89
|
6,618
|
|
Indonesia
|
119
|
3,475
|
|
Sri Lanka
|
124
|
3,280
|
|
Vietnam
|
137
|
1,911
|
|
India
|
148
|
1,499
|
|
Pakistan
|
152
|
1,299
|
|
Nepal
|
170
|
694
|
|
Somalia
|
189
|
150
|
|
World
|
|
10,472
|
|
Source: World Bank National Account Data, 2013.
|
||
In sum, the main concern today
is the impairment of human potential, which is not allowing India to reap its
rich demographic dividend. Key human development indictors have stagnated.
So what need to be done to unlock India’s
potential? In other words, what should be agenda for human
development?
No doubt, putting the economy back on track and reducing inflation
should be the government’s first priority. However, for sustainable development
it is equally important to focus on human capital. Central to the human development approach is the concept of
capabilities. Basic capabilities valued by virtually everyone include: good health
including reproductive health, access to knowledge, and a decent material
standard of living. In my recent post, I argued that for far too long,
India has been a chronic under-achiever relative to potential. Economic growth
is not enough; it
must be accompanied by structural transformation to unlock the human potential.[4]
It
is high time that political parties and policy makers focus on improving
people’s ability to earn more rather than dolling out subsidies that make
people dependent on the political class and system. And that will be a true tribute
to Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.
[1] Kalam and Rajan. 2014. Beyond 2020: Vision for
Tomorrow's India, Penguin Books.
[2] World Bank.
India Country Overview 2013
[3] The measure is
especially useful when comparing one country to another because it shows the
relative performance of the countries. A rise in per capita GDP signals growth
in the economy and tends to translate as an increase in productivity.
[4] See post by author: “Growth
with structural transformation: A development agenda for India” at:
http://kotharionindia.blogspot.in/2015/01/growth-with-structural-transformation.html.
