Only Inclusive Policies Can Strengthen the Nation

As the nation celebrates its 75th year of independence, it is only appropriate to sum up its achievements and the setbacks. Nothing would adequately sum up these markers better than the observation made by the great Cambridge economist Joan Robinson. Decades back, she is quoted to have said that “what is frustrating about India is that whatever you can rightly say of India, the opposite is also true.” The veracity of this statement resonates even today as evident from the vociferous reaction to the monologue on “Two Indias” that went viral last year.

Sadly, nowhere is the concept of Two Indias more visible than in the economic sphere. Even as the nation made surprising gains over the last 75 years, with its gross domestic product (GDP) rising to be among the top five in the global rankings, the poverty levels remain intolerably high. The multidimensional poverty index developed by the Niti Aayog indicates that around a quarter of the population continues to be poor, and rural poverty is as high as one-third. This is despite the fact that the country has moved 273 million people out of poverty in the decade between 2005–06 and 2015–16.