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Right policies will end poverty: Chidambaram

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has said that India should be able to free itself of the stigma of poverty at least during the lifetime of the present generation of youngsters by adopting the right policies for economic growth.

Inaugurating the State Bank of Travancore (SBT) Chair Professorship at the University of Kerala’s Institute of Management in Kerala here on Sunday, Mr. Chidambaram said that the world today had the knowledge and economic tools to get rid of poverty. Countries such as China, Malaysia and Korea had already got over the stigma and several other countries were well on the way to doing so. India too would do it, “if not in my lifetime, in the lifetime of my children,” he said. He said creation of wealth should not be looked upon with suspicion. The old concept that perceived wealth as the interplay of capital and labour was no longer valid in the present-day world. The wealthiest man in the world now was not the one who owned large properties, but the one who commanded great ideas. These were the days when knowledge and entrepreneurship acted as the key to success and progress, he said.

The way China and India were progressing in the recent years, 60 per cent of the world’s output of goods and services would come from these two countries by the year 2020. India’s strength would be its human resource. The country would have to invest its energies and resources heavily in high-end education and skills training. No government could, on its own, address these demands of a one-billion-strong society. The sizeable chunk of the investment would have to come from other areas, with appropriate regulatory bodies enforcing standards, Mr. Chidambaram said.

He said the Union government had adopted as its policy to open many more Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management in the country to produce technocrats and managers to lead the country’s economic growth. He lauded the SBT’s initiative in instituting the chair professorship at the Institute of Management in Kerala.

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