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Modi's growth strategy bypasses the poor

By Kamal Nayan Kabra. Dated: 5/26/2017 11:53:11 PM

Little impact on job generation in three years

It seems the post-2014 NDA government is behaving as though it were perennially in an election mode. In one sense, this might reflect heightened consciousness about ultimate democratic accountability. Also that elections have to be a highly managed affair and the parties as election machines have to remain constantly on their toes. This might impact either the nature and thrust of the policies or might focus primarily on their popular projection by means of packaging and marketing. After all, the rulers want people to view their policies in a friendly colour, whatever the field outcomes.
Building long term grassroots level capabilities and the resulting popular policies do not seem to be greatly consistent with India's over a quarter century old active neo-liberal dispensation inherited for furthering by the NDA. Each year these policies yield about 7 percent rate of GDP growth. It makes India count among the so-called bright spot in the otherwise dismal global economic scenario, not so far able to overcome the aftermath of global recession and other unhelpful economic and political changes across the world. But what is the actual state of affairs?
The neoliberal corporate -led growth brings limited, if any, cheers to about 13 million annual additions to the labour force that, joined by the many times larger past backlog of the deprived and the excluded who legitimately look forward to the NDA regime to deliver decent livelihood opportunities as promised during election campaign. But micro-management of the investments and growth have been entrusted to the corporate firms who find little profit prospects to find any demand for their products from the people without access to the bare means of livelihood. How to break this man-made dilemma is no part of the neoliberal growth strategy.
Thus corporate -led growth does not even touch, let alone impresses, the poor masses and they remain the outcastes of growth. Recent data by the official agencies confirm this dismal truth. Declining from 7,10,000 in 2011-12 and 2012-13 to 2,70,000 from 2014-15 to April -September 2016, these policies have added more to joblessness than to creation of work participation opportunities. Obviously this has led to mass deprivation and unrest, weakening the market for even the informal sector micro entrepreneurs, especially as lakhs of informal workers lost their livelihood due to note-bandi.
Compare and contrast these outcomes against the impressive gains by the year -end results announced by the companies, their market capitalization and many opportunities during which the shareholders booked massive profits. Little wonder we have a situation in which the top 10 percent of the urban people have an income level over five thousand times higher than that of their bottom 10 percent counterparts. Even more inhuman and anti-national is the fact that shows how the top one percent of the population controls over 58 percent of the national wealth!.
This kind of addition to the massive backlog of dissatisfied legitimate aspirants over a quarter century has generated a time bomb . There is little evidence that the human resources and citizenship rights based approach has found a direct and primary place in the arsenal of measures devised by the NDA Strategists. There is little doubt to underplay this legitimate national task of full time and adequate earning opportunities for everyone over a reasonable period of time. Have the skill India, make in India, facilitated by ease of business, free and liberalized inflow and outflow of FDI, supported by smart cities and start ups, and similar high voltage colourful programmes and initiatives taken care of even a small fraction of these largely involuntary members of the informal sector?
What happens to lakhs of young aspirants who are herded in private teaching shops, are made to pay high tuition fees, capitation charges and at the end of this farce end up with a piece of paper signed by some neo-literate rich and powerful guy, called a degree, that does not win any regular job ? Nor is the unorganized sector facing any pressure to increase production and employ people. In fact , huge trade deficit each year kills lakhs of Indian jobs which are inadequately compensated by the increased jobs for export production. Let us recall that these adversely included sections have derived limited ,if any, benefit from the adequate, appropriate and affordable supply of public and quasi-public services, let alone social security cover, to live a human life as they remain outside the workforce for a better part of their lives and still are without any universal social security cover.
It is symptomatic that organized sector employment data, remains unreported for long periods. , In 2015, the organized sector employment data gave figures for 2011 only, showing that total of such employment is just a little below 3 crore out of a labour force of over 52 crore. Even among them, thanks to relentless privatization, which transferred huge social wealth to some chosen private corny capitalists, the share of public sector employment has been declining and has come down below that of the private corporate sector: both taken together hardly touch the fringe of the livelihood crisis facing young and middle age India.
Where does one see our young India demographic dividend? Is it being reflected in the long wait in the employment exchange registration counters?. The location of investment, whether in India or outside, does not seem to matter to the MNCs and Indian big business so long as their overall business expands. But opening up of every sphere, active encouragement to FDI with equal ease for inflow as also outflows, cannot simply be a drive for make in India during the times of growing global trend of protectionism. How long can the divisive talk and campaigns be a substitute for a dignified life with livelihood security for everyone is something we have to realize before it is too late.
—(IPA Service)
The writer is a leading economist.