THE GROWTH- THE ONLY SOLUTION
Written by
Brij Sachdeva
An Indian relative of an American doctor told me one day that in America they had to spend 800 dollars as installation charges for a new geyser worth 400 dollars. Here, in India, we purchase a geyser for 8000 rupees with installation charges of 100 rupees only. In India, people need to earn at least 70000 rupees per month to manage the basic requirements. Now if a youth is unable to find a satisfactory job after completing his studies, future appears to be bleak. If he decides to go for a private job at a show room or a departmental store, he will get only 4000 rupees per month, working 9 AM to 9PM. As a consequence, youth is likely to go astray and start thinking about making money by unfair means. If you are in America, to me, there seems to be no point in going for unfair means of earning money because a little bit of effort can yield enough dollars to manage the basic requirements for the livelihood of a family. Why would someone jump over the wall of a house and steal something like a CNG cylinder or a television set, which is very common in India, when he can get 800 dollars for the installation of a geyser, I mean anything of the kind.
If a worker gets 70000 rupees per month in a showroom or departmental store, what is the point in going for unfair means and taking risks? In my view, genuine progress can only be deemed to have occurred when it becomes feasible for a worker or laborer to provide for the essential needs of their family, including decent housing, clothing, food, education for their children, and access to healthcare. As far as my viewpoint is concerned, for a country, economic growth is the only solution to eliminate ninety percent of problems. The growth has the potential to eliminate or make the problems insignificant. If corruption is a great problem, the growth has a greater potential to make it insignificant.
When the growth comes, everyone is bound to get his share. If the growth comes to your town, the economic value of your house will rise. If you do a business, obviously your business is going to flourish. When the wind blows it enters even into the burrows of the rats and the snakes as well. But we, in a way, have proved to be the real enemies of the growth. In the seventies and eighties, we said no to the first industrial revolution, we said no to the second industrial revolution. China grabbed these opportunities, but we could not. Our masses are also close-minded. Actually we are completely closed to anything which is new. It is like, we stop making roads just because of the reason that if there are roads, there will be accidents. In a village, a road was being made. The residents of the village started protesting against the construction of the road. Their logic in favour of the protest was really strange. They said," How will we be able to track the footprints of thieves when they steal our cattle".
We were against railway trains, we were against dams, we were against computers. We thought that the computers would make us slaves. They will make us lazy. We believed that the computers were going to ruin us by making us unemployed. But today we can see that if anything has generated the largest number of jobs, that is the computer and the very IT sector. The contribution of information technology sector in India's GDP, increased from 1.2% in 1998 to 7.5% in 2012. In my blog post 'MAKE THE CHANGE' I have explained how the IT sector contributed to the growth of India in spite of our antagonistic attitude.
Sometimes I wonder about the prevalence of a trend in Indian politics. If the ruling political party tries to do the economic reforms, the opposition party stands against their implementation. Actually, it has become the way of winning elections. The same political party in ruling time feels that reforms are good for the country but when in opposition, becomes a party to the protesters against these reforms. When the ruling and the opposition, both parties know that something is good for the Nation, but the protests against the very same thing can lead to winning or losing the elections, then who is wrong? - 'The masses' of course, I must say, unfortunately.
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