Devendra Kothari PhD
Population and Development Analyst
Forum for Population Action
Empowering deprived population will yield greater dividend
The policy paper- Nurturing Human
Development: A Strategy for New India - provides a pragmatic and workable
agenda for NEW INDIA based on the concept on Social Inclusion.[1] India
has been trying to achieve inclusiveness through reservations in government
jobs and higher education. If the reservation system had truly worked to
empower deprived or backward communities, the decades of its operation ought to
have ensured an inclusive society. But we have seen that India is most unequal
society in the world. The paper provides
an alternative framework to achieve social inclusion.
Productivity
is a major determinant of economic growth and provides the basic
trust for the improvement of the standard of living. As per the International Monetary Fund, India became the seventh
largest economy in the world in terms of GDP in 2016 but still it has a
very-very low per capita GDP. As a result it is placed at 123rd position among
186 countries. This is perhaps the most visible challenge.
The results of the cross country analysis
indicate that the level of productivity is negatively related to income
inequality.[2]
Even though India has made remarkable progress
in various fields, pockets of exclusion continue to prevent millions of its
people from realising their true potential. It is because of this that India has been ranked the most unequal large country in the world. The concern raised by many experts is that this equality is
rising much faster than expected. The
top one per cent richest individuals in India appropriated six per cent of
total income in the early 1980s, and now, this figure has gone up to twenty two
per cent.[3]
This suggests that wealth is not trickling down to the poor and India is turning into a ‘republic of
inequality’.
As
a result, over fifty per cent of India’s population
(Box 1) still
has little or no access to basic facilities, such as quality education, health
or sanitation even
after the adoption of market-friendly strategies during the 1990s and
record-high GDP growth in recent years.[4]
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Box 1
Sizable deprived population
Around 700
million (70 crore) out of the total population of 1350 million in March 2018
can be classified as deprived or Vanchit
population. And, without empowering this population of 140 million (14 crore)
families, mainly comprising Dalits, tribes, other lower castes including OBCs
and Muslims, India cannot think of becoming a developed country.
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What
is the way out? The
paper is based on the premise that only the well-being of the deprived
population, capable of actively participating in the development process and in
market economy, can ensure sustainable and inclusive development of the
country. Bill
Gates and Ratan Tata rightly noted: “Human capital is one of India’s
greatest assets. Yet, the world’s fastest growing economy hasn’t touched
millions of Indian citizens at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”[5]
It will, therefore, be
more effective and rewarding if we can focus on the poor families and provide
opportunities to them for upward mobility.
In fact, in the changed situation the poor
people want upward social mobility, as evidenced by recent violent agitations.
But the irony is that most political parties insist on imposing a social
identity on their vote banks without in the least realising that these deprived
people want other identities, or at least be associated with it – probably a
more neutral identity which is not as closely linked with their given identity.
These aspirations have come largely through media exposure, and through what
one sees others doing (as proposed by M.N. Srinivas in the concept of
“Sanskritisation”). Both Indian politics and society would, therefore, will be
better served if we could move our discourse more towards identities like
‘aspirational’ middle class rather than
“be fixated around supposedly immutable ascriptive identities” like caste and
religion.[6] This
move will help the vast downtrodden population in achieving middle class
identity leading to the creation of an inclusive society in the real sense. Now
the crucial question is how to translate this premise into a concrete
fundamental plan in policy framework and programme?
For this, India has to empower its
people through a dedicated human development approach/strategy. The
proposed approach is the central point of the paper, focuses on enhancing the
richness of human life rather than simply the richness of the economy. It will enable ordinary people to decide who they want to be, what to
do, and how to live. Also, it will help India transform its demographic dividend into an
asset.
To start with, the process of human
development must focus on five
interventions, namely: Improving the
quality of school education, Strengthening WASH factors (Water, Sanitation and
Hygiene), Enhancing primary health, Reducing gender gap, and most importantly Stabilizing the population by minimizing incidents of unwanted childbearing incidences
and bringing down infant mortality. In addition, we recognize that shifting of
excess labour from agriculture to non-agriculture sectors and managing climate
change including the quality of air and water are important inputs in the
process of human development.
How
to implement the strategy?
It may be recalled that the Government of India
has launched various pro-poor
schemes in recent years such as
‘Swachh Bharat’, ‘Skill India’, ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’, ‘Ujjwala’,
‘Saubhagya’, and ‘Ayushman Bharat’ among others for
financial inclusion and unlocking human potential. These schemes give new wings to
aspirations of the poor. However, it
appears that these schemes may not serve the purpose since most of these are being implemented
on a piecemeal basis and in isolation from the wider process of holistic
development. No
doubt, India needs a comprehensive policy package in place of incremental
approaches to expedite the process of human development.
The
paper, therefore, suggests a strategy entitled ‘HDPlus’ to identify the right beneficiaries or the
target population. Additional inputs may be added looking at the needs
of specific people/area. Hence, the framework has been termed as “HDPlus”. It is based on a ‘whole child’ concept, that is child and his/her family should be
the fulcrum of human development efforts and is being referred as ‘HDPlus
families’. The concept is being described by policies,
practices, and relationships which ensure that each child is healthy, educated,
engaged, supported and encouraged. For this, integrating the child and his or
her family more deeply into the day-to-day life of school and home activities
represents an untapped instrument for raising the overall achievements
including learning skills and health parameters, and hence improving overall
productivity. In other words, creating an enabling environment at family and
school levels is a way out to empower people.
Now the question arises
how to identify the target population or HDPlus families? In this framework, all government
school-going children, aged between 6 and 14, and their families will be the
target population for action. Most BPL (Below Poverty Line) families send their
children to government schools, though some of them have started sending their
children to the private ones too. The suggested framework will be implemented
by government agencies in collaboration with civil (society) organizations as
was done in the Pulse Polio campaign during the 1990s and the 2000s to
eradicate the polio virus (Box 2).
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Box 2
HDPlus framework: at a glance
HDPlus is an affirmative action framework to change the circumstances that
lead to (or have led to) social exclusion.
Its main features are:
·
The focus of action will be all
school-going children, aged 6 to 14, in government schools and their families
(HDPlus families).
·
The focal point of various governments’
pro-poor schemes along with HD interventions will be HDPlus families.
·
The framework will be
implemented by government agencies in collaboration with civil organizations.
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India’s future is apparently bright, but it will depend on which direction our
policies lead us to. India has to
develop not only in wealth but also in human potential. HD, therefore, is more
than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenges of
increasing productivity, reducing inequality, promoting sustainable development
and building good governance (Box 3). It is high time
that the Government of India and research institutions focus on developing
effective and smart human development agenda to unlock the human
capital. And, the paper suggests a prototype - HDPlus.
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Box 3
The major Benefits of the proposed HDPlus strategy:
·
It will trigger rapid economic growth on a sustainable basis, and India can be a developed country in a generation.
·
It will
open new vistas for social mobility or an aspirational middle class identity, which are urgently needed for sustainable
development of the country.
·
It will help to solve an array of seemingly intractable problems
such as the battle over caste reservations, gender inequality and lack of
opportunity for youth among others.
·
It will redesign India’s future by providing its youth with
innovative ideas/jobs, involving robotics and artificial intelligence.
·
It will reinforce the faith
in liberal values.
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[1] Based on the policy paper:
Nurturing Human Development: A Strategy for New India by the author. It
analyses what actions to be taken in the next 5 to 10 years to empower the
people, especially the Satar Crore Vanchit
(deprived) Bharatiya. It can be an
effective political slogan. For details,
contact: Dr. Kothari at: E mail: dkothari42@gmail.com & Mobile: 91 9829119868.
[2] DiPietro, William
R. 2014. “Productivity Growth and Income
Inequality,” Journal of Economics and Development Studies, Vol. 2 (3): 01-08.
[3] Chancel, Lucas and Thomas Piketty.
2017. “Indian income inequality,
1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?” WID, World Working Paper Series No. 2017/11,
World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics. Also refer at: http://wid.world/document/chancelpiketty2017widworld/
[4] Chancel, Lucas and Thomas Piketty.
2017. “Indian income inequality,
1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?” WID, World Working Paper Series No. 2017/11,
World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics. Also refer at: http://wid.world/document/chancelpiketty2017widworld/
[5] Gates, Bill and Ratan Tata. 2016. “New nutrition report underscores the
importance of leadership in addressing stunting in India” at: https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/new-nutrition-report-underscores-the-importance-of-leadership-in-addressing-stunting-in-india
[6] Kapur,
Devesh. 2018. “Middle class is an aspirational
identity … people want other identities not as closely linked with their
ascriptive identity” at: https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Addictions/middle-class-is-an-aspirational-identity-people-want-other-identities-not-as-closely-linked-with-their-ascriptive-identity/
