Managing the economy that is as complex as India's is very complex. Many Governments have fallen flat on trying to kickstart the economy. True, we are maintaining a healthy 8% GDP growth. But the underlying cracks in the economy is slowly becoming fault lines. Any article about economy conventionally needs to have lots of macro economic figures. I shall not bore you with figures but rather take a simple, subjective in nature.
The biggest drawback is the delivery system. Only 10-15% of the intended amount for development and welfare programs reach the ultimate beneficiary. The balance is pilfered away by unscurulous elements in the beaureaucracy and politics. The saddest part is that this has been identified as a major factor for failure by successive governments but they have done very little. In fact the unscrulous elements are becoming bolder.
The current govenment administration system is cumbersome and a legacy from the British Raj mainly aimed at collecting revenue from the locals. It was never intended to serve the people. The beaureaucracy is bloated, unwieldy, unaccountable, corrupt and is a drain on exchequer. The earlier we reorganize and prune the administrative system, the better. This will also reduce the non plan expenditure which in some states have reached unmanageable proportions.
Spending on Primary Education as a percentage of GDP is one of the lowest in world. As a country boasting of prowess in knowledge management, this is totally unacceptable. There are children who do not have access to school and the drop out rate is very very high at the primary level. Even if schools are available, adequate infrastructre and teachers are absent. Result - students remaining illeterate in the true sense of the word. Illeteracy amongst the children has multiple consequences. First, school drop outs will end up as child labourers which is not acceptable. Second, the productivity of illeterate children as they grow up will remain low. Human asset augumentation is critical for a country with a billion plus population. This gets adversely affected. Third, this will also lead to increased law and order problems as crime rate is linked to education. The need of the hour is to increase spending on education at least by 100% and change the curriculum to include more vocational training. This has to be backed by a support system that is in tune with the education to provide jobs at the rural areas which in turn will prevent migration of rural youth to cities - to be continued
