Against the Tide

Recent visit of our Prime Minister to the United States has received bundles of accolades and heaps of admiration for raising the status of our Nation to a new height of immense capabilities. It could have been a usual and routine visit like those of the past, but, one must admit that this time our leader’s visit has given a new dimension to our level. Nation could have made a huge celebration as the mood has formed in the air and hopefully this time our leader will get a pompous welcome back when he returns and steps on his motherland.

Our government has successfully placed Digital India program in the western world. Our leaders have rightly attracted the IT who’s who to invest in India. There are true reasons of celebrations for the IT corporate kings for they are being welcomed to explore one of the largest Greenfield areas with almost one-fifth of world population. Jubilation is such, that one proud US citizen doesn’t hesitate to embrace Indian tri-colour in his Facebook profile picture. Fever is now viral.

Our leaders are confidently upbeat as they have already planned for broadband connectivity to 2.5 lakhs gram panchayats with high-speed internet by December next. National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN) program target to cover 7.5 lakh kms all across India.

Meyer and Birdsall and Tim Light carried a survey and estimated the number of Middle Income population to be about 70 millions in 2009-10. These groups as well as the World Bank estimated in their 2011 reports that this middle income group can be double by 2015 and add another 500 million people by 2025 if India’s economy continues to grow per projections. This would make it, with China, the world’s largest middle income group.

Do we have reasons to be proud enough looking at these figures? I think so. But, but as me always obsessed to look against the tide there are enough reasons to bite our fingers too.

According to the World Bank, the world had 872.3 million people below the new poverty line, of which 179.6 million people lived in India in 2011 (based on revised methodology) . This means 17.5% of total world’s population below poverty line belong to us. In 2012, the Indian government stated 21.9% of its population is below its official poverty limit against the world average of 18%.

Towns and cities make more than two thirds of the Indian GDP with less than a third of the population living in them. About 28% of the population live in the urban areas. These means with three-fourths of the population living in rural India contributes to only one-third of the national income. Main reason for rural India’s poor performance in terms of income is the fact that it is mostly dependent on agriculture. Worst is that the agricultural growth has taken the back-seat in the recent years.  Economic Survery 2015 says agricultural sector that engages 49% of workforce of the country grew at 1.1% in 2014-15. First three years of the 12^th Five-Year plan (2012-17) rate of agri-GDP growth turns out to be meager 2% against a target of at least 4%.

For us rainfall still remains a vital input for agricultural output. Added up to it, is the deteriorating agricultural productivity with such a huge work force. This deterioration can be due to lack of adequate scientific practices supplemented by heavy doses of chemical fertilizers and harmful pesticides (in pursuit of achieving higher yields). Poor harvest and falling prices will make the rural population more impatient and disillusioned and might further retard private investments in this sector. All these will affect further poverty alleviation process.

Need of the hour is to attract more investments in water supply, agri-R&D, farm mechanization, rural road, rural electrification, etc. Empowering the rural population is the need of the hour. Internet connectivity is important but more important is the road connectivity, sufficient electricity supply and adequate water.

Last but not the least, what you will do with the computer or lap-top if your children are not educated, not properly feed, not properly cared? Just take a glance at the figures below:

How Countries Spend Their Money (in percentage)

Countries	Military	Health	Education
USA	19.3	19.3	17.1
Canada	6.3	17.8	12.7
China	18.2	9.9	12.1
Japan	6.4	17.9	10.5
Australia	7.1	17	13.3
Russia	18.7	10.8	11.5
France	5.4	16.7	11.4
UK	6.3	16.3	11.5
India	18.6	3.4	3.9
Germany	3.3	17.9	9.5

Priorities are clearly reflected. I am not going into the arguments of which one should come first or second in the priority list. There are real think tanks to guide the leaders in the right direction.

I only feel that we could have a better bargain if we could make our country a more Empowered Nation with Empowered villages & Empowered Population.