Author: Prof. Amit Bhaduri
Publisher: National Book Trust , India
Reviewer: Prof. Raj Kumar Mittal, Member-UGC and All India Co-Convener, Swadeshi Jagran Manch
Review
The book is written by internationally renowned unconventional economist Prof. Amit Bhaduri, who has the distinction of challenging the mainstream theorists and providing solutions within the market economy through state interventions. The contents of the book are presented in six chapters. The author made a distinction between political democracy and economic democracy. India despite having enormous diversity in terms of religion, language and ethnicity has gradually becomes a mature democratic country politically . However, despite so many years of efforts by governments , we still have a large number of people who may be around 10 percent of our population living below the poverty line. Though growth since economic reforms in 1991 onwards has been pretty good yet our per capita income is abysmally low and in terms of our ranking in HDI , we stand at a very low position. The author pointed out severe economic disparities in income distribution suggesting disconnect between our economic and political systems. He suggested that high economic growth has to be pro-poor in its thrust and social barriers of discrimination and prejudices based on gender, caste, language , religion, or ethnicity needs to be broken. Prof. Bhaduri termed this situation as Development with Dignity. In such a situation basic needs of life like food, shelter, clothing , clean water, health and education etc can not be left to the mercy of market forces and governments must be sensitive to such situations to address people issues and problems. The author says different political parties have failed to make a growth agenda as pro- poor and bring pro poor reforms into actionable policy decisions . Keeping in view the prevailing situation of jobless growth and poverty in India, the author of the book presented the alternate strategy for having a situation of Full Employment in the country. He is of the view the goal should be to first target employment and then automatically growth will take place in the economy. Targeting growth first and then seeing employment is not the right strategy. For full Employment in the economy Prof Bhaduri suggested to empower rural and urban local bodies for decentralised decisions on the pattern of division of powers and resources between centre and states. Based on such a system , these local bodies need to identify projects which create infrastructure in short and long run and thus through income generation demand for goods and services. Through full utilisation of existing capacity inflation in the system could be checked. He suggested having a minimum wage rate be given to everyone who offers to join in such projects. This approach will ensure employment to all on sustainable basis. He suggested for amendment in Fiscal Responsibility and Management Act which unnecessarily puts a check on Govt. power to print new currency through RBI. Funding of these projects through domestic public debt is a better option than funding through foreign debt. Prof Bhaduri also suggested relying more on domestic sources of growth than foreign sources like exports and FDIs, which imposes unnecessarily restrictions on domestic policies. Prof. Bhaduri was able to pinpoint India’s number one problem as unemployment and called for adoption of strategies towards achievement of Full Employment , the same stand is taken by Swadeshi Swavalambi Bharat Abhiyaan and has called for attainment of Full Employment through promotion of entrepreneurship. Policy makers should listen to what Prof. Bhaduri has written long back in 2005 when this book was published. The book presents the ideas briefly in simple language. The book is worth to read by those who are genuinely interested in solving India’s unemployment problem and want to utilise the demographic dividend which we today enjoy.
By Prof. Raj Kumar Mittal, Member-UGC and All India Co-Convener, Swadeshi Jagran Manch.
