India @ 75
Independence Day Wishes!!!!
India won its freedom through non-violence. Though there were a partition and religious riots across the country post-independence, India chose to be a secular state. During the cold war, when the world was divided into two ideological blocs, India stood non-aligned. She remained as a source of inspiration and helped in the attainment of freedom for many colonies. Though we were poor, we allowed Tibetans, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankan Tamils in times of crisis and they lived here without state discrimination. Though it was a huge burden for us to accommodate a large influx of refugees from East Pakistan in 1971, we never declared war on them. Though we won the Indo-Pak war in 1971, we never created another Versailles treaty with Pakistan. We have adopted No First Use policy in case of Nuclear armaments. Though we were closer to the Soviet Union, through hindsight, we could understand that we strongly opposed its invasion of Afghanistan. Amongst the countries, we are not an economic superpower but a moral superpower.
It is this moral power that aspired us in the past to achieve higher economic growth. She wanted to bring out millions of her people out of poverty, she wanted to provide her children with quality education, skills, and opportunities, she wanted to provide her citizens with proper nutrition and affordable healthcare services, she wanted to put a roof over the head of every people living under her rule and she wanted her elderly to retire peacefully. However, in the past few years, it seems that we want to achieve the economic growth for some global fame. If the country’s rank moved up in any parameters measured by any of the international organizations, it was considered as the major achievement. And now we have a new target — a five trillion-dollar economy.
With the demography in our favor, the last decade could not be a more favorable period for the government to reform the economy. But that opportunity is lost forever. All constituents of national income are in decline. The unemployment rate is at a 45-year high. It is painful to say that the government’s top think-tank NITI Aayog has reported that poverty and hunger are on the rise in the last two years. India can’t achieve required growth to create opportunities for her large number of young populations without unleashing structural economic reforms in the factor markets (land, labor, and capital), simplifying the regulations, bringing in sectoral reforms and reforming her educational system. If we failed to create opportunities for 12 million people entering the workforce annually, there could be more calls for wealth redistribution. No one is against the idea of wealth redistribution, per se. But to redistribute wealth, there should be wealth in the first place. If we redistribute the already scarce wealth available now in the system that is broken and is riddled with leakages, it is not going to create welfare for anyone in the state.
To quote Shakespeare, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but ourselves’. Without working hard, without improving our productivity and without bringing a greater number of people to the workforce, we can’t achieve higher growth and the moral vision associated with it.
Note: This is the truncated version of my earlier story. To read full story, please click here.
