Kerala - Kottayam   

A policy conflict between two Indias, says Patnaik

KOTTAYAM: Noted economist and Vice-Chairman of the Kerala State Planning Board Prabhath Patnaik has said that India’s foreign policy is experiencing a hiatus on account of the conflicting economic policy needs of the majority rural population who were the victims of globalisation and the bourgeoisie urban middle class who were the beneficiaries of the globalisation process.

Delivering his keynote address at the international seminar on ‘Emerging India: Strategic Options in the New Century,’ Mr. Patnaik said the economic policy needs of the majority rural population was being affected by the foreign policy needs of the bourgeoisie and urban middle class who had merged to the global economic regime, the architecture of which was closely linked to the U.S.’s economic needs.

Earlier, there was a consensus on India’s foreign policy, which was a natural outgrowth of the anti-colonial struggle. This was also true about the economic policy which gave a pivotal role to the public sector, he said.

However, this consensus had broken down and there was a debate on both foreign policy and economic policy now. To make the economic growth inclusive, we may need to activate a different economic regime, he said.

He contested the claim of an ‘emerging India’ and said only the bourgeoisie and urban middle class had emerged on the global scene, with the majority rural poor still languishing as the victims of globalisation. There were two Indias, of which one was emerging, he said.

Earlier, making her presentation at the academic session, Elizabeth Hanson, professor emeritus and chair of India Studies, University of Connecticut, emphasised India’s comparative advantage in information technology and added that this transformation of the country into a major power would be possible “only if the benefits were widely shared and the gains are distributed over a broad cross section of the population.”

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