In recent years, India has enjoyed consistently high rates of growth. However, the country faces a critical challenge of high growth accompanied by persistent poverty and inequality. The Human Development Index (HDI) of India, which is a composite index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, is ranked 129th out of 189 countries in 2019. According to this index, Inequality and deprivation continue to be high in the country.

Consistent High Economic Growth And Lower Human Development Indicators

1. India’s economic growth post liberalisation remained high. In the last decade, GDP growth rate remained more than 5% reaching up to 11% in 2010.
2. With an approximately $2.9 trillion economy, India is one of the largest economies of the world.
3. Despite these economic achievements, India is home to 28 per cent of the 1.3 billion multidimensional poor in the world.
4. India ranked 94 among 107 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2020 and continues to be in the “serious” hunger category.
5. In gender inequality, India has a GII value of 0.501, ranking it 122 out of 162 countries in the 2018 index. The decline in women’s labour force participation from 31% to 24% means that India is among the countries with the lowest.
6. Only 39 per cent of adult women have reached at least a secondary level of education compared to 63.5 percent of their male counterparts.

Issues In Achieving Balanced And Inclusive Development

Economic Issues

Jobless growth and disguised employment: India created fewer jobs as compared to economic growth. Similarly, more than 40% of the workforce is employed in the agriculture sector with a GDP contribution of merely 16%. Such a huge workforce engaged in agriculture makes it disguised employment.

1. Unequal Distribution of Wealth: India’s richest 1% of the population hold 42.5% of national wealth while the bottom 50%, the majority of the population, owns a mere 2.8%. Such huge inequality leads to poor human development.

Social Issues

1. Casteism is a historic and cultural issue plaguing Indian society, which leads to social exclusion and pushes communities such as Dalit and Adivasis into the vicious cycle of poverty.
2. Gender inequality is also another social menace affecting the social and economic growth of India. Defined gender roles and gender-based discrimination affect the health and education of women.

Poor Education And Health

1. The commercialisation of education and declining quality of education in public schools produce an unemployable and unskilled workforce.
2. Due to huge inequality and resource scarcity, access to quality health and education services becomes unaffordable for a large part of the population.
3. India is home to one of the largest number of malnourished children in the world and 50% of the Indian women are anaemic. Such poor health conditions affect the ultimate productivity and trap people in poverty.

Political Issues

1. Indian politicians resort to Communal politics rather than a development agenda. Corruption and diversion of public money towards political gains rather than public welfare is a huge issue.
2. Due to the lack of political will in critical aspects such as agriculture and migrant workers issues, we are not able to trickle-down economic growth to all the sections of the society.
3. Passage of important bills such as the labour code bill is also pending due to misplaced political priorities.

Way Forward

1. Development initiatives like the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (for financial inclusion) and Ayushman Bharat (for universal health-care) are crucial in ensuring inclusive growth with improvements in human development.
2. A recent initiative to implement One Nation One Ration is also going to help in the elimination of hunger and malnourishment.
3. Strategy planned under IndiaYash Thakur for inclusive growth, school and higher education, and universal health coverage, etc must be implemented on a mission mode.
4. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, such as zero hunger, no poverty and gender equality with inclusive and sustainable growth, India should play the role of a welfare state in letter and spirit.