So, we are finally on the penultimate hours of 2008.. a year that will be hard to forget. Almost every bytes of bandwidth and rims of newsprint have been devoted to the infamous bubble and its reverberations throughout the global order of late, and a lot more unfortunate people across the world will be raising the New Year toast with a forced smile.......pink slips, plunging portfolio worth, and over and above an ominous cloud over the economic horizon, where every day the newspaper is looked up with uncanny worry, lest another bad news props up, reminds us that we are in a peculiar world.
Really?
Back home, with the added threat of terrorism and war mongering by hawks, old Santa has hardly brought cheer! But, with due credence to the financial crisis and its seemingly dampening effects on the prospects of an emerging economy powerhouse, are we not overtly concerned with only the tip of the iceberg of the challenges that is faced by the 'real economy'?True, credit crunch and recessionary environments never helps in development prspects of a nation, but an obsession with the figures churned out by the Reserve Bank and a host of other economic thinktanks on the GDP growth prospects, will only help the number-crunchers, not the people who ought to be at the centre of development policy. Over decades, development economists have been crying hoarse over the dichotomy between GDP growth and development in true sense of term, which encompasses a much wider paradigm, and the lacunae in national economic policy efforts that seems to be solely fuelled by the decimal points of macroeconomic indicators, GDP included. As Amartya Sen puts it, evidence suggest that the causality between GDP growth and development of living standards is not always unidirectional, and not always to a high rate of GDP growth guarantees improved lives for the people, in a fair and equitable manner (Interested readers can get a sample here).
Here, Abdou Diouf also warns about the other crises in more recent times that may well be of a global concern. We need to factor in these aspects and development concerns as well.
Rampant poverty, endemic malnourishment among the children, omnipresent threat of preventable morbidities, dearth of universal access to basic needs of education, sanitation, drinking water and access to public utilities still characterise the India of 2008, and would have been most likely the same even if the financial crisis have not appeared in the horizon. I intend to elaborate and consider each aspects closely in later posts (with due aid of 'statistics', as most of us are only moved by the figures!), but this reminds us of the challenge we continue to face in ensuring a more humane life to all Indians, and not limiting public discourse on the rammifications of fiscal stimulus to financial instituions, fledging stock markets and happenings on the corporate India. That will only be a penumbric act which can seriously impede our aspirations to emerge as a global superpower of tomorrow.
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