ECONOMIC HIGHLIGHTS
New
Delhi, 10 February 2006
Vision 2020
INDIA A DEVELOPED NATION
By Dr. Vinod Mehta
The Sensex has crossed the ten thousand mark; the
average growth rate for the first two quarters is above eight per cent. It looks forward to participating in G-8
meetings. Most people now feel that India should shed the tag of
developing country and be classified as an ‘emerging’ economy before being
called a developed economy.
This change in the mindset of some
of our people and leaders is very important, and gives the necessary confidence
to the nation to achieve that milestone.
The President has already envisioned developed India by
2020. The year is not sacrosanct in the
sense that on January 1, 2020 we would become a developed nation like Japan or Germany. The important thing is
that given the favourable economic situation, we should start working in that
direction and endeavour to achieve that
goal say in the next 20 to 25 years. The timing is correct, what we need is a
clear map to achieve that status.
Some people may think of it as a cynical idea; even
after 50 years of Independence we have not been
able to ensure safe drinking water to every person or achieve 100% literacy, so
why talk about India
as developed nation? Well, this is a brute fact and should be recognized so and
efforts doubled to solve these issues on an urgent basis.
However, it is the vision which is very important.
Nehru had a vision of India
as a developed country over a period of time. This vision led him to set up
institutions like IITs, IIMs, CSIR, ISRO, Atomic Energy Commission. DRDO, Agricultural Universities, AIIMS and even research in
the field of social sciences and humanities have made them known. People had at
that time also laughed at him but today after 50 years, the achievements by
Indian scientists, engineers, doctors, managers, social scientists are known
the world over. We are at a stage now where we can talk about and think
about achieving the status of a developed country in the coming years.
The eyes of many countries are focused on India. Each of
its development or achievement is being scanned by these countries. There are
some powers which would not like India to become a developed nation
and so are engaged in pinpricking. The treatment meted out to our software
engineers in Malaysia, Indonesia and Netherlands a few years ago, was a
pointer in that direction. Even some of our drug companies had to face and are
still facing legal battles against their newer drugs in some of the developed
countries.
The ban on the transfer of certain kinds of
technologies is also a pointer in the direction of slowing down India’s entry
into the league of developed nations. Therefore, keeping in mind that other
countries would like to stall or delay our march towards a developed nation, we
must have a clearly defined path to achieve the goal of becoming a developed
nation.
As a first step, problems like
illiteracy and lack of safe drinking water which have been with us since Independence need to be
tackled on a war footing. Most of the diseases are water borne. If we can
ensure safe drinking water to everyone the health of the population will
generally improve and there will be less pressure on our hospitals. As far as
education is concerned, it is simply not enough to have literate people but
people with a qualification up to a minimum school level, say 10th
standard.
If the country is going to use
computers in almost every aspect of life, it is essential that the population
is educated enough to handle and work on these gadgets. Moreover, the face of
the economy is changing very fast and only the educated people can protect
their own interests. For instance, the pension schemes are being privatized,
therefore, unless the person who is investing his money in these schemes
understands how they work will not be able to make correct judgements.
Having said that, let us now try to
build on our strengths. As we know, the process of economic reforms is on for
the past 15 years. During this period many new first-time entrepreneurs have
emerged in the country such as Infosys, Wipro and many others. The process of
economic reforms needs to be speeded up further so that we are able to complete
this process in the next five years. If the economy is competitive in the
international market it will automatically become strong over a period of time.
Without a strong economy and a strong financial system we will not be able to
keep abreast with the developed nations.
The results of economic reforms are
now for everyone to see; Indian firms are becoming lean and cost effective now.
After the reforms in the industrial sector we should now complete the economic
reforms in the financial sector also. Steps have already been taken like the
establishment of private sector banks, private insurance companies, setting up
of Pension Funds, relaxation in foreign currency regulations and so on. But we
must speed up the reforms in this sector and get rid of NPAs at the earliest.
However, we have yet to start
reforms in the agricultural sector. This is an area which has a very big
potential to make us a developed country. Till date we do not have any
agricultural policy worth the name. Our productivity of agricultural crops per
hectare is much lower than the productivity in other countries. Though we are
number one in milk production today but it is due to the fact that we have a
large number of milch cattle and not because the productivity of our milch
cattle is high as in other developed countries.
The market for agricultural products
is still under-developed in terms of infrastructure and access to international
markets. Countries like Holland and Germany grow more grain per hectare than India and get
more milk from limited number of cattle stock. Therefore, to make India a
developed country we will have to bring the agricultural sector on par with
this sector in the developed countries.
Technologies play an important role
in making a country developed. Why America is on the top today is
because it has the best of technologies in the world. Indian scientists have
also done well to develop technologies which can put India at par with other developed
countries. If one may say so, many of
the Indian scientists and technologists working outside India have
contributed to scientific research in those countries. If we can get our act
together and consolidate our position in the technological sphere then we can
claim to become a developed country.
Despite the sanctions imposed upon
us we have been able to develop technologies needed for our defence
requirements. We should not, however, limit ourselves to developing only
defense technologies. It has also many commercial uses. It is high time that we start making use of
technologies developed in the defence sector in the commercial sector. Ban on
transfer of technology should be treated as a blessing in disguise. We must
redouble efforts on inventing and mastering new technologies.
Again there is also a need to change
the mindset of the people so that they are more in tune with the developed
countries. For instance, over a period time we should start reducing dependence
on concessional loans from various countries and instead start giving
concessional loans to other developing countries. In collaboration with foreign
countries on research we should always insist on becoming an equal partner
instead of a junior partner. For participation in international conferences
symposia we should stop taking any assistance from developed countries for our
travel and stay by arguing that we belong to
a third world country.
Finally, we also need to have a
world class infrastructure ready in the next 15 years. We need to set up world
class communication system, transport system including good road, rail and air
network. All these are minimum
requirements for the emergence of a developed nation which India aspires
to be. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News and Feature Alliance)
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