PRODUCTIVITY FOR INCLUSIVE GROWTH
The Indian economy, which has over the last six decades passed through various phases of growth, is now all set to enter an altogether different orbit marked by a high rate of expansion, combined with ‘inclusive growth.’ Theterm, inclusive growth, is finding its way increasingly in the lexicon of government leaders, economists, planners,academicians and businessmen, not just in India but even internationally.
Although Indian economy has borne adverse effects of global economic slowdown and figures GDP growth rate highs of 6.5 percent in 2009. Yet major portion of our population i.e. about 800-1000 millions are still to participate in the country’s growth and benefit from it directly and therefore we still need solutions to mainstream social change, to enhance people’s productivity and their wealth creating capabilities and these solutions need to be designed for scale, executed at scale and sustained at scale to achieve inclusive growth for India.
It is indeed a matter ofconcern that high national income growth alone does not address the challenge of employment promotion, povertyreduction and balanced regional development. Nor does growth in itself improve human development. Consequently,all the major initiatives of government of India at present – in agricultural and rural development, in industry andurban development, in infrastructure and services, in education and health care etc– sought to promote ‘Productivity for inclusivegrowth’.
Government’s massive efforts since independence and creation of public sector having a focused mandate forbalanced regional development did have an impact on inclusive growth to some extent. However, due to a variety of reasons inefficient service delivery mechanismshampered the best intentions of planners and policy makers.
There is a great scope for enhancing the efficiency as well as effectiveness of host of meaningful schemes of the government leading to higher convergence and effectiveness.The government is concerned with evolving a variety of innovative strategies to make its dominant imperative of Inclusive Growth a success. One such innovation is the public-private partnership through the involvement of organized industry/service sector.
The pace of government reforms and work done by NGOs is still very slowand when one talks about public access to healthcare, education, food and water, power, energy and even infrastructure, what we have missed out on is in getting people involved and bringing the power of markets to the grassroots. The solution lies in getting the private sector involved, and ensuring that its participation goes much beyond that of the traditional ambit of Corporate Social Responsibility.
The recent focus on Corporate Governance as well as ethical aspects of running business – in particular the product safety and life-cycle – impact of the industry/product on the society are some of those initiatives forcing the industry to look at certain facets having bearing on Inclusive Growth.As a matter of fact, the increasingly popular concept of triple bottom-line does focus on the need to have a relook andintrospect on the social and environmental productivity and sustainability of the business as well.
Further, the period of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization has brought in intense competition and consequently enhanced focus on commercial focus of business more than ever and could be the reason for increasing gap between “Haves” and “Have Nots” i.e. industrial employees and related population on one-side and rural and urban poor & informal and unorganized sector employees on the other.
Productivity for Inclusive growth in its simplest form means growth that is reasonably, indeed fairly shared, and that corresponds to both equality and equity. It includes measurable criteria and more intangible elements. The former (the measurable) comprises of measuring income distribution, the literacy rate, the general provision and distribution of public goods, including education, health, electricity, water, transport infrastructure, personal security, etc.
To successfully address the challenge of Productivity for inclusive growth will require a mobilization of all possible stakeholders. The players to be included in this enormous task – and who need to be included in all major national programs – are national governments, local governments, international organizations, domestic corporate, multinational corporate, entrepreneurs, NGOs, academe and the media.
Reforms in the last two decades reveal that while there have been achievements on the economic growth front, inequalities have increased and exclusion continues. It is here that the enhanced and complementary role of productivity comes at the center stage to catalyze the efforts ofthe government and every stakeholderin making it more effective in tackling the issues of Inclusive Growthfor economic reforms with equitable development. Therefore, “Productivity for Inclusive Growth” has been chosen as the theme for the ‘Productivity Week-2010’ (12th – 18th February 2010).
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