The story of India is the story of millions serving as minions of an inhuman state controlled by a few hundred. While homeless people are dying on the street due to lack of adequate shelter, the billionaires of our country are mourning over the erosion in the value of their holdings. Economically speaking, these 60 (and now 40) billionaires are the “VIPs of India”, as a 38% fall in their net monetary worth has led to a 27% fall in the country’s market capitalisation. Thus the Indian Government is relentlessly devising policies and norms that would help the big business houses of the country to bounce back, attract foreign investments and joint ventures thereby improving the market cap of the nation. The unfortunate part is that the benefits and returns of these efforts will be largely enjoyed by a very small group of people. The value of the stock holdings for the billionaires and few-hundred-millionaires will go up. However, the majority of the country’s population will still remain where they are, undeveloped and without adequate attention and support from the government.

One cannot argue that the current Government efforts are unnecessary. They are necessary but not enough for the rightful development of the country. The problem with our Governments (irrespective of whether UPA or NDA) has been lack of a long term vision. Most of the legendary bills and policies are passed as a kneejerk reaction to the then current state of affairs. Efforts are necessary that would bridge the gap between the lower and upper levels of the economic strata in the long run so that the country can enjoy in the true sense of the terms “diversity” and “a young population”. Quoting Mr. Nandan Nilekani here, “The Demographic Dividend that the country enjoys is only as good as the investment made into nurturing this human capital”.

Short-term solutions like providing 7Kgs of rice a month at Rs. 3 per Kg is not a solution that will make that happen; neither will a scheme like NREGA which is just about menial work and not mental work make any impact in the long run. The former has already put pressure on subsidies which eat up Rs. 1.44 lakh crore annually.  Rs. 63,000 crore is the estimated burden due to this bill which is sure to shoot up due to factors like our poor Public Distribution System (PDS), corruption, etc. It will not be far-fetched to say that subsidy being one of the most politically sensitive topics; the current Government has used it as a means to rectify its own reputation rather than as a true ailment to the current food crisis. Besides the fact, that the country already faces a challenge to control its fiscal deficit, it is quite possible that even after spending so much, the street children and homeless people will still die of hunger.

Talking of the NREGA scheme which “enhances the livelihood security of people in the rural areas by guaranteeing 100-days of wage employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work” has restricted the employment options to digging earth, breaking stones and the like. Such policies are more harmful than otherwise because inherent to these policies is sheer disrespect of the ability of a poor Indian to earn his bread by doing creative and meaningful work. Additionally, such policies will create a huge dependent mass of people in the long term. Many people in the rural areas will stop engaging in their traditional occupation which may be as a farmer or as an artisan and instead rely on schemes like NREGA and the food security bill to fill their stomachs. Such a scenario will be disastrous for the country.

These short-term solutions can at best be used to augment long-term plans to eradicate poverty, create literacy and employment and make people of India earn their livelihood with dignity. First of all the Government needs to reckon the fact that India has too large a population and a brisk population growth rate which makes it almost impossible to meet demands of the people through subsidies, free food and tax-exemptions and guaranteed employment. Such initiatives are not sustainable in a country like India. What is required is supporting people to become self-dependent.

This needs a two-pronged approach. First invest in developing the young human capital in the country. This means invest in providing education, shelters to the homeless, adequate health facilities and infrastructural support. The fruits of such investment in terms of prosperity, better per-capita income figures, reducing inequity in the society will take a generation to show its results which means say about twenty to thirty years. If the State wishes to intervene to eradicate poverty, these are the appropriate mechanisms. Finding employment and earning livelihood is something that should be left to the people themselves. These are the basic ingredients for survival today, and if we try to create a society which gets these on a platter, it will lead to an inherently weak and vulnerable society.

On the other hand, the need is to invest in Ideas that are generated in the under-developed or isolated parts of the country. These areas due to lack of resources and attention from the government and our big business houses have become the bedrock of many innovative ideas. The speciality about these ideas is they are cost-effective and have a direct impact on the ease and convenience with which people live their lives in a limited set of resources. Thus the route to prosperity for many such areas is already present. If these ideas are facilitated with cheap source of finance, professional training, direct market access, the area is bound to develop. The government will have an additional role to monitor that the actual creator or idea generator gets the maximum benefit, both monetarily and otherwise.

To let the above long-term efforts materialize, the country should pool in the best minds form the best institutes like IITs and IIMs to usher this development. This may quite possible mean working in a PPP mode, easing the boundaries between states and localizing governance. There needs to be a collective effort between the central and the state governments, between the educational institutions, between the public and the private sector and between the parallel societies. I would like to conclude with a question to the reader: “If you know that you cannot support your children through their entire lifetime, would you rather spend your resources in buying them candies or invest in making them self-dependent?”