Jean Dreze asks Centre to shed growth fixation

New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government needs to shed its “obsession” with economic growth and take a broader view of what development is about, argues noted economist Jean Dreze.

Author of a number of books on development and policies in India, he also feels that the Centre is “abdicating” its responsibilities in many sectors and handing them over to the corporate, or to the state governments.

In an interview to PTI, he was asked about the impact of the NDA government’s policies on social and economic life of the lower strata of the society and his concerns on the widening rich-poor gap and Aadhaar-based public distribution system. “The government should shed its obsession with economic growth and take a broader view of what development is about. Economic growth can certainly contribute to development, in the sense of a widely shared improvement in the quality of life, but it does not go very far on its own,” Mr Dreze, who served as a member in the former government’s National Advisory Council, said.

The Belgian-born Dreze, now an Indian citizen, held that development also requires wide-ranging public action in fields like education, health, nutrition, social security, environmental protection, public transport, to name a few.

“The Modi government is abdicating many of these responsibilities and handing them over to the corporate sector in one way or another, or to the state governments. To illustrate, the most important foundation of development is universal quality education. This is evident from recent development experiences around the world, and in India itself,” he said.

“Universal quality education is all the more important in India, because of the country’s extreme social inequalities. Yet five years have passed without any major initiative in the field of elementary education,” he added.

According to him, the underprivileged have not had a particularly good time in the last five years and claimed demonetisation hit the financially weaker section.

Noting that despite demonetisation, the economy somehow managed to remain close to the trend growth rate of 7.5 per cent around which it has hovered for much of the last 15 years, he said rural wage rates have more or less stagnated in real terms.