Inclusive Growth

I have decided to give the motivation topic a bit of a rest and will come back to it after sometime.  Today, I thought I will write on my favourite topic - Inclusive Growth.  I wrote an article on the office intranet few weeks ago on Inclusive Growth and thought I will re-produce that here with few changes.

I was recently sent a mail that discussed how luxury apartments are coming back to demand. The story talked of a sky walk with cobbled pathways lined with trees, above the 19th floor, where apartment owners could do their walking/jogging. I was struck by what people could do to feel “happier” or “more secure”. I asked myself if I would trade an opportunity to help a poor child’s education with a chance to jog on one of those skywalks. The answer was a definitive no.

India grows at over 7% every year but this growth is not at the same pace across all sectors and does not therefore, include all parts of our society. So, we end up with two ‘Indias’ with stark differences – one that is really affluent and can afford these skywalks and one that can barely scrape through with one meal in a day.

For growth to be healthy, we need to understand the pace of growth across all sectors and ensure that it reaches out to all parts of the society. Since we have not done that it has impacted us significantly. So, what this inequitable growth does is to skew various aspects of the society – salaries across industries, education system and the courses that children opt for (eg. more people doing computer engineering or a degree in accounting), eating patterns, inflationary pressures that are different in cities and villages, cropping patterns, disease patterns and you name it…almost everything. One of the key reasons for increasing naxalism is precisely this difference in economic conditions across the country.

What can we do?

We need to break the poverty cycle and each one of us can do this in our own small way. We can improve the chances of someone getting a job by providing them with a level of education they would not have otherwise got. If we do that, we give these people and their families a livelihood and a method of sustenance. We need to look at options of giving jobs at villages and smaller towns so that they need not migrate to large cities. I am sure each one of us thinks about this when we hear our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh talk of “inclusive growth” and when he says that this is the only way forward for us as a country. Each of us must also look at breaking this poverty cycle in our own way, because the aim is to have an India with no stark differences in living standards.

In one on my earlier jobs, I started a program to employ staff from 3rd and 4th tier schools.  People whose family income did not exceed Rs.3000 a month in 2004.  It was a huge success.  What made me realise the real impact was when I got a mail from one of these staffers 4 years later. He wrote (and I quote), "Sir, I am not sure if you remember me.  I was one of the people you employed 4 years ago in the first batch of contract staff.  Today, my sister's son goes to a better school than the one I did." (end quote).  This email of his made my day!!!