Soft options

India?s new metroscape of steel-and-glass high-rises and gleaming automobiles hides a harsh reality. Access to a quality way of life remains restricted to just a small proportion of the population.

India’s new metroscape of steel-and-glass high-rises and gleaming automobiles hides a harsh reality. Access to a quality way of life remains restricted to just a small proportion of the population. Even the ‘privileged sections’ of society face intense competition in their attempt to live a ‘dream life’. There can be no question, therefore, on the need for urgent action to ensure that larger, and if possible, all sections of society share the benefits of growth and development. After its plan to introduce job quotas for underprivileged sections of society in the private sector ran into stiff resistance from India Inc., the government is now offering a slew of financial and other incentives to the corporate sector to invest in severely underdeveloped areas, especially those with a predominant scheduled caste/scheduled tribe population. However, incentives alone are not enough to ensure investment.

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Unless the government ensures that adequate and quality infrastructure is made available on the ground, the economics of competition will push investment to areas where it’s available. Shuttered factories and skeletons of abandoned ‘backward area industrial estates’ that litter the country’s rural landscape are proof that mere creation of roads and provision of powerlines is not sufficient to sustain industrial activity. Modern industry requires sophisticated infrastructure, including ‘soft infrastructure’ like access to good education, quality health services and living conditions, even access to entertainment and shopping, in order to induce skilled manpower to relocate to remote locations.

By ensuring creation of this ‘soft infrastructure’ in backward areas, and empowering the local population to compete for the quality jobs created there, and not merely a handful of menial posts, the UPA government’s goal of ‘inclusive growth’ stands a real chance of becoming a reality. One hopes that political differences will be set aside in pursuing the larger vision of a genuinely empowered India.