Development for whom?

Self Reliant to Self Mortgage The Indian economy-1950-80 was Self reliant Grew much faster in the 1980-90 driven by government expenditure through domestic and external borrowing, along with opening up to imports. In 1991 when the crisis reached its peak, the government took massive loans from the IMF and World Bank. Under pressure from the IMF and the World Bank as well as the US and other Western powers New Economic Policy emerged Successive governments in India embarked on the path of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG) and adopted the ideology of neo-liberalism.

What is Neo Liberalism? Liberalization involves loosening of government control over the economy in favour of market forces. Government investment is gradually withdrawn, while private capital, and specially foreign capital, are encouraged in all sectors. This implies that the broader social good is no longer the guiding principle, but expansion of the private sector into all parts of the economy including public services. Evidence may show that only some sections actually benefit.

All Round Privatization Privatization relates not only to government selling public sector units or shares in State-owned enterprises to private companies, thus gradually dismantling the public sector, But also opening up all sectors including education, health, infrastructure and so on to private players, in the belief that running these services as profit-making entities is better than promoting social well-being through government action. Experience the world over shows that this leads to reduced access of the lower-income groups to education, health, energy, transport and other public services and infrastructure

LPG Demands LPG calls for minimal taxes, government regulation and government expenditure. This has serious consequences for the government’s welfare programmes and investment policies. Since 1991, successive governments in India have cut back social welfare programmes and public investments, much to the detriment of lower income groups and sharply widening social and economic inequality

Jobless Growth The average rate of growth over the entire neo-liberal period has been over 6 percent, even going up to 8% over occasional short periods. Service Sctor-56% Manufacturing Sector 16% Agriculture and Associated 17% Job creation has been the lowest during the neo-liberal period than in the preceding decades. All increase in employment has been in informal jobs that not only offer very low wages, but involve long working hours under poor conditions, no welfare benefits, and are completely insecure with poor labour rights.

Impact on Poor Annual growth rate of Agriculture 0.6 per cent between 1995 and 2005. 3 lakh farmers suicide between 1997 and 2015 Informalization of the labour force and slow growth of employment Cutbacks in expenditures on social protection and food, fertilizer and energy subsidies Poverty has gone up in recent years. Food insecurity and malnutrition is a widely prevalent

Growing Rich Net worth of India's billionaires has increased dramatically by 12 times in the past 15 years, enough to eliminate absolute poverty twice over in the country. India is ranked fifth in terms of number of billionaires with 70 billionaires, 17 more than in 2013. India has a higher number of these super rich individuals than Germany, Switzerland, France and Japan. The combined wealth of the Indians billionaires comes to a staggering Rs.26 lakh crores ($390 billion)!

Why Inequality Informalization of the labour force, slow growth of employment, severe agrarian crisis Cutbacks in expenditures on social protection and food, fertilizer and energy subsidies Privatization and commercialization of education and health, inequality across social classes and across the rural-urban divide has increased significantly over the period of neo-liberal policies. Besides income inequality, there are also the other axes of inequality such as gender, caste and rural/urban. In all these dimensions, the degree of inequality in terms of wealth, incomes and access to health and education have all increased substantially.

Flagship Programmes and impacts Bullet Trains, Smart Cities, Regional Airports etc clearly bring out how massive public funds are being spent on high-value projects which will mainly benefit upper income groups especially in urban areas. Such "development" will only worsen the already high degree of inequality Diversion of Funds lead to cut in Social Service Sectors Only worsen the inequalities noted above between rich and poor, urban and rural, and along social fault lines of caste, gender and region. Is this the model of development that we want for India?