Since the early 1990s, the Indian economy has freed itself from the shackles of the Hindu growth rate1 and has become the centripetal force of globalization. In league with the Chinese, during the post-globalization and liberalization era, India has scripted its growth story to draw admiring attention of the rest of the world. As far as the official statistics and the law of average are concerned, India has been able to give a near double-digit growth to a billion people, the global financial meltdown notwithstanding. However, to feed this growth machine, spiralling demands for air travel, reliable power supply, efficient ports, roads and railways have been matched with only tardy supply, giving rise to the fear of possible bottlenecks in its growth potential. Nevertheless, in the Foreword to the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2012), Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated the ability of the Indian economy to continue with its trajectory of economic growth, but apropos he added, “We have yet to achieve comparable success in inclusiveness” (GoI, 2008).
Datta (1982), a noted teacher of Economics at the erstwhile Presidency College, while delivering an endowment lecture at the University of Calcutta, titled “Social Justice in a Mixed Economy”, had concluded his lecture in more or less the same vein that the rule of the game required growth with justice. For, no society can be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of members are poor and miserable (Smith, 1776). But Prof. Datta also pointed out, rather in dismay, that, “In the final analysis, all this becomes a matter of political will. There has not been any scarcity of intentions. But the policy packages as actually implemented have shown not only weak execution, but also a poverty of will” (Datta, 1982, p. 64). In consequence, despite 11 such Five Year Plans in the last six decades, India continues to present two opposite and conflicting visages: one, which is of a resurgent, vibrant India—ready to take on the world; and the other is that of the traditional India grappling with its ancient problems—poverty, hunger, malnutrition and squalor. While the vibrant, ‘new India’ is the result of the success of our democratic system—euphemistically called the largest democracy in the world, the opposite picture is the concomitant of our democratic deficits still waiting to be redressed. As far as our official statistics are concerned, the Indian economy, relative to its neighbors and also relative to its own historic standards, is growing rapidly. However, vis-à-vis the tinsel growth stories, empirical evidence seemed to indicate that growth did not necessarily help the poor (Adelman, 1975; and Sen, 1999). In the Indian context, a report by Sengupta (2007, p. i) is a harsh reminder that a whopping 77% of the population has a per capita consumption up to 20 (in 2000-05) only. The number of persons belonging to this group, as Prof. Sengupta pointed out, increased from 811 million in
1999-2000 to 836 million in 2004-05.
Statistics about poverty are discursive and one source is widely at variance with the other. For instance, based on a $1.25 criterion for measurement of poverty, the World Bank (2010) estimates put the figure of poor in India to 456 million in the comparable period (World Bank, 2010, Table 2.8) . The differences notwithstanding, we have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; the well-being of our fellow citizens also matters. Amidst the looming threats of social exclusion, terrorism and insurgency (which are, at least in part, the results of poverty and social injustice) around us, we have also learned that the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. This paper therefore builds on this central message that rapid reduction of infrastructure deficits holds the key to the Indian competitiveness in the increasingly globalized economic environment. But India must create wealth at a massive scale for the benefits of its increasing number of underclass. We, as and when required, turn to the pages of Adam Smith’s magnum opus, The Wealth of Nations, to advance the cause of market economy, but Adam Smith [the author of another important work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)] also observed that, “... they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged” (Smith, 1776). This simple but powerful observation of Adam Smith now provides the basis of a global recognition that societies function best when economic growth and social justice coalesce.
This paper argues that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) provide not only a benchmark for such ethical coalescence, but can also be a useful guide to resolve confusion, say for example, when a choice is to be made between air conditioner in the staff room of a publicly funded educational institution and the need for blackboards in the thousands of our primary schools – a sentiment most powerfully and eloquently expressed by
Prof. Amartya Sen that, “A society can be Pareto optimal and still be perfectly disgusting” (Sen cited in UNDP, 2005, p. 53). The essence of Prof. Sen’s argument is that there are limits to the acceptable level of inequality.
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