The development process
C. T. KURIEN
|
Papers on policy and programmes in relation to planning and the changes effected in them from 1991
|
FROM STATISM TO NEO-LIBERALISM — The Development Process in India: Edited by V. Upadhyay, Shakti Kak, Kaustuva Barik, T. Ravi Kumar; Daanish Books, 26 B Skylark Apartments, Gazipur, Delhi-110096. Rs. 595.
Several publications have come out in recent times evaluating the performance of the Indian economy since the reforms were initiated in 1991, and this book is an addition to this literature. The eleven papers brought together in this volume are a selection from those presented at a two-day national seminar organised in February 2005 in Rajasthan to mark the birth centenary of Prof. D. R. Gadgil. The objective of the seminar was to review critically the policy and programmes in relation to various aspects of planning during the planning era and the changes effected in them from 1991 and to assess the implications of the process of liberalisation and globalisation for the working class.
The opening piece is by Kamal Narayan Kabra on ‘development thinking of Indian planners.’ Kabra maintains that the first Five-Year Plan had a broad and deep understanding of the problems and the process of development in an underdeveloped country. However, from the second Plan onwards the emphasis shifted to just economic development and the attention came to be concentrated on the technical aspects, the need to step up the level of investment and its sectoral allocation in particular.
After going through all the Plan documents right up to the draft of the Approach Paper to the 11th Plan, the conclusion that Kabra comes to is this: what they show is “the primacy of the economic components in a narrow GDP growth rate sense of the term.” This is rather disappointing. As the lead paper in the collection one would have expected it to spell out what is meant by ‘statism’ (of the planning period) and how different it was from the ‘neo-liberalism’ of the post-1991 period. In fact, no paper in the collection adequately deals with this issue.
Industry
The next four papers are largely on industries: ‘Productivity growth in Indian manufacturing sector’ by Kaustuva Barik; ‘Nature of investment and disparate regional growth’ by T. Ravi Kumar; ‘Trade-linked industrialisation in India’s planning’ by Bhaskar Majumdar; and ‘Trade liberalisation: performance and impact’ by V. Updadhyay and Devashis Bose.
These papers draw attention to the discouraging performance of the industrial sector in the neo-liberal phase; the reduction in the institutional mechanism to reduce regional disparities; the failure of the trade-linked industrialisation to narrow down the import-export gap and to reduce the magnitude of external debt; the opening up of the economy leading to a reduction of employment in manufacturing and thus to ‘deindustrialisation.’ A problem that these papers share is that the factual material they use largely come up only to the early years of the present decade, too short a time-span to assess the impact of the reforms.
S.P. Singh and Shakti Kak, in separate papers, deal with the agricultural sector. They document that since the early 1990s there has been a sharp decline in capital formation in agriculture mainly because of a reduction in public investment, that production and productivity of all crops have fallen, that employment labourers have been adversely affected, and that altogether the sector is in deep crisis. This condition of agriculture is part of the explanation for the widespread prevalence of malnutrition in the country. The papers by B.P. Mathur and Shibalal Meher deal with fiscal issues, the former with expenditure management and the latter with inter-State disparities.
State of SCs, STs
One of the most informative papers is by Archana Prasad dealing with the condition of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Although the upliftment of these groups of people has been an explicitly stated task both during the planning period and since the reforms, tangible achievements have been limited because of the failure to ensure access to productive resources. At the same time, several of the major ‘development projects’ in the country have led to the displacement and dispossession of large sections of the SC and ST communities.
A detailed account of health services is given by Alpana Sagar. She maintains that though a comprehensive health strategy was gradually evolved during the Plan period it was never seriously implemented and “today the state responsibility for health care is being undermined and health is being increasingly defined as a commodity and not as a right.” Those who are looking for a quick survey of the early phase of the reform period will find this collection, especially the factual material contained in it, helpful.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Book Review
