ACCORDING to the 66th round of the National Sample Survey carried out between July 2009 and June 2010, 66 per cent of India’s rural population lives on less than Rs 35 a day and nearly as many in cities on Rs 66 a day. The survey also points out that 10 per cent of the population at the bottom in the rural areas lives on Rs 15 a day, while in urban areas the figure is only a shade better at Rs 20 a day. “It may disappoint foreign companies eying India as a large market buoyed by a growing spending power”, as aptly put editorially in The Tribune (May 5).
The Government of India appointed a Commission on Unorganised Enterprises under the Chairmanship of Dr Arjun Sengupta. The unorganised sector, including agriculture and other sundry occupations providing livelihood to a large segment of the Indian population, covers 93 per cent of our workforce. The report of this commission states that 77 per cent of the Indian population lives with a per capita consumption of up to Rs 20 (in 2004-05). Since then the situation has not undergone a radical change.
Elementary education and basic health services are two sectors which play a crucial role in the country’s productive potential. If the workforce is reasonably literate and fairly healthy, it contributes immensely to the country’s development. All those countries in the world which have made rapid strides in the field of development made immense investment in these two sectors in the early stages of growth. This is true of the advanced capitalist countries as well. In India, these two sectors unfortunately remain largely ignored.
The government school education system is in a shambles, paving way for the private sector to enter into the field to mint money. Now private schools, euphemistically known as “public”, can be seen even in villages. The government schools, in fact, have become a dumping ground for the children of the weaker sections — freebies like midday meals, scholarships, free textbooks, etc, being the major attraction. According to a study conducted by the Programme for International Students Assessment, among 74 countries, Indian students rank second to the last, at the 73rd position, just above Kyrgyzstan. The fate of the recent decision under the RTE Act making it compulsory for private schools, except those run by minority communities, to admit 25 per cent students from the weaker sections, is beset with many problems. The only solution is to evolve a universal school system where children of the different strata of society study together.
Government spending on health is below 1 per cent of the GDP, among the lowest in the world. Service delivery in government-run medical institutions is poor. A World Bank study found that half the treatments suggested by government doctors in India were likely to make the condition of patients worse, not better. This has led to the mushrooming of private clinics and hospitals in urban centres, and quacks in villages. There are five star super-speciality private hospitals in big cities with latest gadgets and medical experts. Only the super-rich can afford to avail themselves of their services. They are business ventures and a patient is treated more of a client than a human being in need of alleviation of his suffering. Human touch is missing.
One major cause for the veritable collapse of the educational and medical systems in the government sector is their bureaucratic management. The stakeholders have no say in running these institutions. Is it humanly possible, say in Haryana, to manage over 7000 schools and about a lakh of teachers by two bureaucrats sitting in Chandigarh? The same is true of the medical institutions. In some states the situation has improved where local committees of stakeholders have an important say in running these institutions.
South Korea and China have succeeded in flooding the world market with goods the manufacturing of which requires no great university training. This has become possible with the help of widespread and efficient elementary education and basic health services. In contrast, even if India were to take over the bulk of the world’s computer software industry, this would still leave its poor, illiterate masses largely untouched, as rightly stressed by Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze.
Another major flaw in the Indian development paradigm is the serious social imbalance it is causing in society. India tops the list of dollar billionaires in Asia and is among the top five in the world. Fifty Indians were on the Forbes list of billionaires in 2011, making up over 20 per cent of the GDP. One study estimates that now 10 per cent of Indians own 53 per cent of the country’s wealth, while the poorest 10 per cent own only 0.2 per cent. The most glaring instance is the 27-storeyed mansion built by an industrial magnate by spending Rs 8000 crore with eight lifts, three helipads, a hanging garden and a battery of servants to house a five-member family in Mumbai while almost half of its population lives in jhoparpattis or on footpath.
According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, 21 per cent of the Indian population is undernourished, nearly 44 per cent of its under-five children underweight and 7 per cent of them dying before they reach five years of age. India’s rank in the 2011 Global Hunger Index at 61 out of 81, places us seven notches below Rwanda. We are also below Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan. Employment in the formal sector has remained virtually stagnant from 26.7 million in 1981 to 27 million in 2006 — a phenomenon of jobless growth. Now in the wake of economic meltdown in the world, India is faced with a steep fall in the value of the rupee and a steady decline in GDP growth.
Economic imbalances beyond a point are bound to generate violent conflicts at the political plane and a variety of crimes in the social field. The problem has been further compounded by a series of mega scams which shows that the greed of a large section of our ruling elite has become a bottomless pit. A polity devoid of ethical norms tends to degenerate into a monstrous entity. No system can survive with the help of force alone once it starts losing legitimacy and ideological hegemony in society.
The present socio-political scenario is causing a great strain on Indian democracy which must be saved and strengthened as it provides its citizens numerous rights for which a lot of blood has been shed in the Arab World and elsewhere. The least the Indian democracy needs today is a strong civil society comprising professional associations, unions, NGOs, a vigilant media, pressure groups and public-spirited individuals. Various progressive measures like the RTI Act, the NAREGA, the Forest Act and the RTE Act are the outcome of the pressure exercised by civil society. The process needs to be further strengthened.
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