JAIPUR: The time has come for India to make a forward leap. All the elements for growth are on its side. The need is to realise the potential of the situation and take advantage of it, according to Abid Hussain, policy expert and India's former ambassador to the United States.

"Democracy is not anti-development - and in the past 30 years India has proved it. With a 300 million-strong middle class, a young work force and a solid knowledge base the country is presently well placed among the galaxy of nations," said Dr. Hussain delivering the P.D. Agarwal Memorial Lecture here on Thursday. "India is on the threshold of great glory. Mera Bharat Mahan!"

The country had three phases of reforms -- the first, rather undeclared, unnoticed one starting in the 1980s -- and the latest one was not under any sort of compulsion. "The first set of reforms went unnoticed. It was a half-hearted approach and the existing political opinion did not favour it," he said. The second set of reforms, initiated in the early 90s, was due to an economic crisis but the ongoing third round of reforms had come from within," he said.

"It has come to existence with sheer power of vote. The public demand has led to many of the reforms," Dr. Hussain asserted. "The Prime Minister envisages a growth rate of 8-10 per cent. The idea of Independence and the power within oneself is growing in the country," he said. However he cautioned that mere growth is not development.

"Mere growth is not development. If India shines for a few people only it is not real shine. We have to see that the rate of growth reaches the poor. If we don't visit the poor the poor will visit us," Dr. Hussain warned.

Dr.Hussain, who spoke appreciatively of the Nehruvian policies, which ensured infrastructure development and self-sufficiency in food, said the failures in the past should be attributed to the system and not to the policies. Apart from bureaucrats and politicians who were wary of any kind of "outside" impact on the country's economy there were "anti-growth and anti-market intellectuals" and lobbies of businessmen and trade unions stopping the progress of the nation in the past, he said. The country's middle class should be the envy of the nations, Dr. Hussain said. In 30 years no other country could uplift 300 millions from below. Eminent economist and professor emeritus at the Institute of Development Studies, Vijay Shanker Vyas, who presided over the lecture, said the country had almost forgotten the legacy of Pt.Nehru. The institutions, which are the mainstay of growth at present, were built by the sheer will power of Nehru, he said. Prof. Vyas, while agreeing with most of the arguments of Dr. Hussain, said when the country's economic growth had remained at 6.5 per cent in the past decade the decline in the poverty rate had been less than one per cent since the 70s. "Why do we continue to be so bad in poverty reduction, health and nutrition," he wondered. Prof. Vyas was felicitated by the Indian Institute of Health Management Research, the sponsors of the lecture series instituted in the name of its late founder P.D. Agarwal, for the Padma Bhushan decoration he received on Republic Day this year.

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