घटती जैव विविधता का संकट

घटती जैव विविधता का संकट

Pluralistic Interventions for Customised Development

The socioeconomic diversities of Bharat, with highly pluralistic techno-economic profiles and vast multiplicity of occupations, spread across an area exceeding over 5259 times the size of entire singapore, need well customized interventions for development, focused at inclusive growth. On reviewing the pluralistic techno-economic profiles of the country, we find the high profile Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), drawing as high as up to Rs. 525 crores p.a. as the chief executive officers (CEOs) of large MNCs, as well as the traditional tribal communities,solely or largely dependent over collection of minor forest produce as their sole means of livehood with an income as low as Rs 5000 p.m. or Rs 166 per day . Geographically, there are most sparsely populated blocks in the districts of Barmer, Jaisalmer or Leh-Laddakh, characterised by acute water scarcities, occupational hardships and highly under-developed infrastructure, including paucity of all civic amenities. To the contrary, there are metros with best possible infrastructural support, high comfort generating civic amenities and very advanced commercial and financial architecture to facilitate and sustain the best state of the art IT and commercial services of all kinds. India needs to harness there pluralistic capabilities, comprising a sprawling core sector; vast heritage of agriculture, allied activities and various crafts; one of the most developed service sector of the world; and an elaborate manufacturing sector spread across 400 industry clusters and manifold industrial estates, though mostly characterised by assembly lines, based largely on outsourced original equipments and sub-assemblies. Besides, Bharat is home to 17.5% of global population and 20% of the world’s youth. But, it has the second highest rate of youth idleness, after South Africa, where 30.8% of our youth between 15-29 years of age are with “no employment, education or training” (NEET) status. To the contrary, there are countries like the Singapore, Sweeden, Switzerland, Germany etc., finding paucity of working age youth to man various positions in the knowledge based sectors, falling vacant on account of superannuation, and finding it difficult to sustain their present state of manufacturing and exports. On the other hand India has been finding it next to impossible, to generate requisite investment in the domestically owned manufacturing capacities, necessary to generate employment for atleast a million of the youth per month or 1.20 core youth in aggregate per annum, acquiring working age per month or per annum respectively. India also has to bridge the vast gap in its contribution towards world manufacturing, as it has a paltry share of 2.1% in world manufacturing vis a vis 22 % share of China in the world manufacturing, which has even pushed the US at number two with just 17.6 %. Now Japan has just 1.6% of world population, but has a 7% contribution in world manufacturing. China too had 2.4% of contribution in world manufacturing in 1991. But, by virtue of acquiring a robust share in the world manufacturing, China could succeed in having highest ratio of middle income group in its total population, vis a vis all other countries of the world, by generating quality employment in manufacturing and allied activities.

Danger of Neo-Liberalism

Rampant unemployment and lack of quality employment in our economy, leading to poor nutrition as well as malnourishment has led India to 100th place in the world hunger index with highest rate of child death rate in the world comprising 4.8% for the children, dying below the age of 5. There are 77% families in the country, which do not have a single regular wage earner and 60.6 of the workers are such who also do not even get a casual job throughout the year. There are only 17% workers who are on regular wage or salary and 71.2% of the workers do not have any kind social security, related to their jobs.

The data from socioeconomic caste census(SECC), released by the government on July 4, 2015, further  reveal that the rural India accounts for 73 per cent of households and 74 per cent of these rural households survive on a monthly income of less than Rs 5,000 (Rs. 166 per day) for  its highest earner. The largest number of such households is in Chhattisgarh — over 90 per cent., which is reflective of almost a nightmarish life of such a vast number of households even after six and half decades of Independence, Moreover, according to these data, 51 per cent of the households are engaged in casual, manual labour subjecting them to dark and random forces of uncertainty for their survival and subsistence. Now only 30 per cent in cultivation, revealing that now agriculture is also not in a position to support more that a third of rural households. According to the SECC data, still, after 24 years of economic reforms, 31.26 per cent of the total rural households as are in the category of "Poorest of the poor” where the main earner of the family has an “insecure and uncertain” source of income and these households too live in a “one room house with kutcha walls and kutcha roof”. Among the SCs and STs only 17.70 per cent of SC and 10.50 per cent of ST households have their own houses. The miseries of rural India do not end here, as 44.5% of rural households live in kuccha houses.

The neo-liberal economic policies in last 26 years largely aimed at liberalising foreign direct investments (FDI) in trade, commerce and Industry; leading to erosion of tax-GDP ratio, especially via reducing indirect tax to GDP; trimming the welfare and social security net, rendering the massed over dependent over Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) for delivery of publicly funded services appear to be counterproductive to our developmental goals.

The automatically excluded households devoid of any tangible variable of inclusiveness as per the SECC found to constitute 39.4 per cent of the total rural population and constitute households with none of the following: motorised vehicles, mechanised agricultural equipment, kisan credit card with credit limit of Rs 50,000 and above, households with any member as a government employee, households with non-agricultural enterprises registered with the government, any family member earning more than Rs 10,000 a month, those paying income/professional tax, living in houses with three or more rooms with all having pucca walls and roof, owning a refrigerator, landline phone, possessing irrigated land etc. Thus almost 40% of the rural population falls below the poverty line on the basis of this automatic exclusion. How long should these families wait to get at least one of these tangible variables of inclusiveness is not certain. Whether in the same generation or in their next generation.

Diversities in Bharat

The big surprise in the SECC was that, even after the preliminary results are out, there does not appear any tangible progress in rural as well as urban India even after a quarter century of the reforms process started in 1991, to take economy on a new growth trajectory with its focus on farmers, agriculture industry and commerce, the SECC shows that over 51% of rural India survives on manual casual labour, while only 30% lives on cultivation. Thus, now agriculture is no more able to sustain the rural households as well, after a level, it was believed to be doing so till yet. Of the rest, 1.61% are non-agricultural enterprise owners, while less than 1% are either beggars or ragpickers. But their number is also above one crore in number almost 157 countries in the world have a population of less than 1 crore. Besides on a rational analysis one finds that the poorer working class is regressing back.

Between 1990 and 2015 India's per capita income is reported to have gone up 3 times with an average annual growth in per capita income by more than 5%. But, the annual wage growth for the industrial workers had been only 1% during the same period, as revealed from the annual survey of industries. To the contrary, the corporate profits in the net value added have grown from 20% to 45%. The share of wages in the net value added of the corporate sector has gone down from 32% to 12% between 1983-2013 the number of dollar billionaires from India in the Forbes' list rose from 1 to 49 by 2010 and 90 in 2014 almost third largest number in the world. This fast growing income divide between India's rich and poor can be largely attributed to the dismal rate at which real wages of industrial workers have grown over the past three decades. It is clearly evident from the data from Annual Survey of Industries, published by Mint, whereby the real wages have grew by just 1% per annum between 1983 and 2013! In fact, the real wages appears to have grown or far less than the growth in per capita income or productivity leading to worst miseries for the wage earners. This completely overrules the trickle down theory based on western economic assumption that the two (growth rate and wages) move in tandem. Moreover the rise in corporate profitability, particularly 1991 onwards is phenomenal and the wage rise has kept on lagging far more and more behind. Share of net corporate profits as percentage of net value added in corporate sector has more than doubled. To the contrary the share of wages has gone down to less than half in the net value added in corporate sector.

The ensuing labour reforms if undertaken are further likely to considerably erode the bargaining power of workers and their unions for having better terms of employment including better wages. In such a case the divide would be much wide leading to stagnation in the purchasing power of the workers and demand necessary for sustainable growth.

For the policy makers and economic planners as well as investors it is important to bear in mind that the ensuing 8-10% GDP growth will be meaningful only if people have disposable income to spend which would happen if the income divide can be bridged to some extent and real wages grow in tandem with growth and per capita income. Without substantial rise in per capita real wages, India's growth story will hardly take off to generate turnovers and growth. The proposed labour reforms likely to take out wind from the sails of bargaining power of labour would further strangulate growth in wages eluding the economy of requisite rise in income, demand, output, investment and employment to facilitate sustained growth.

Bharat, therefore has to move on a multipronged approach to incorporate all of the multiple economic profiles and occupation including agriculture, industry, commerce and services to place increased disposable income in the hands of all the sections, enough for a descent living. Agriculture: Agriculture needs to get precedence over all sectors, as more than half of our population is solely dependent over agriculture. Moreover India has world’s highest arable area of 189 million hectares and second highest irrigated area of 67 million hectares. Almost 20 crore hectare meters of water going in ocean without being utilized, can raise our irrigation potential to 165-170 million hectare, that can help us, feed two third of the world’s population. Our yield in the unirrigated area is 700 kg cereals per ha, while for the irrigated area, it is 3000 kg per ha. The countries like Netherland, largely dependent over organic manures reap 9 tonnes food grains per ha. Therefore, enhanced public investment in agriculture can revolutionaries agriculture even if we can raise our average yield of cereals to 7 Tonnes per ha, by raising our irrigation potential and productivity. It would be discussed in the concluding article. (To be concluded)