India needs policy focus in areas like infrastructure development, accelerating labour intensive manufacturing, education and skill of workers, improving social sector development and sustainable development, said director and vice-chancellor of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, S. Mahendra Dev.
He stated that India has to face many global challenges such as climate change, urbanisation, migration, technologies like automation, increased inequality, changes in political factors like the US and China policies, Brexit and protectionism.
While delivering the Waheeduddin Khan Memorial Lecture on ‘Beyond India @75: Growth, Inclusion and Sustainability’ at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS) on Thursday, Prof. Dev said that there are issues like geopolitical challenges with a new bipolar world — USA/China — emerging in the recent past with old bipolar world — USA/Russia, and international trade and protection, and technologies like automation, robotics, 3D printing, digitisation and Artificial Intelligence and increasing inequalities.
Explaining various issues that would impact the economic growth of India, Prof. Dev said that the government has mentioned that India would achieve $ 5 trillion economy by 2024 but it would take another four to five years to reach that. Informing that export of goods has completely stagnated with annual growth rate of almost 0% during 2012-19 while the growth rate of service exports declined noticeably to 5.9%. “India accounts for less than 2% of the world export manufacturers while the share of China stands at 13%,” he commented.
Referring to credit in the national economy, he said that it was only 50% of GDP compared to 100% in many other countries. He stressed the need to keep credit flowing to all categories of economic agents – firms and households. On agriculture, he said that the current policies are still based on the ‘deficit’ mindset of 1960s and the procurement, subsidies and water policies are biased towards rice and wheat.
“Diversification of cropping pattern towards millets, pulses, oil seeds and horticulture is needed for more equal distribution of water, sustainable and climate resilient agriculture,” said Prof. Dev, adding that agriculture should change towards high value production, better remunerative prices and farm income.
The meeting was presided over by founder member of CESS C.H. Hanumantha Rao.
