India’s poor left behind by blistering growth

NEW DELHI – India’s scorching growth is failing to filter down to its hundreds of millions of poor people, a ruling Congress party minister has warned, stoking fears of social conflict.

India’s economy grew by 9,4 per cent last year and the government is targeting nearly nine percent expansion or higher this year for the country of 1,1 billion people. “Here we are kissing 10 per cent growth and instead of living standards rising, they are falling (for many),” minister for local governments Mani Shankar Aiyar told the India Economic Summit in New Delhi that wound up yesterday.”India is becoming prosperous but not Indians,” Aiyar said.The boom is “disproportionately affecting a small percentage of the population,” Aiyar said, noting despite strong growth, India sank in the Human Development Index to 128th place from 126 last year.While summit speakers have been upbeat about business prospects, they have also reminded delegates that India has no room for complacency.A quarter of Indians exist below the poverty line with most living off small subsistence farms, delegates were told at the summit, whose theme is how to reshape India in an “inclusive and sustainable way.A report prepared by the summit, part of the World Economic Forum in Davos, listed a litany of challenges.India’s crumbling infrastructure is stretched to its limits, it said.The country has 18 per cent of the world’s population but only four percent of the planet’s water and demand for water will exceed supply by 2050.”Eighty per cent of Indians don’t have access to proper sanitation, most don’t have access to power,” said Anand Mahindra, vice chairman of giant Indian truckmaker Mahindra & Mahindra.India accounts for one-third of the world’s illiterates with just 64 per cent of adults able to read.Aiyar blamed a lazy, bumbling and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy for many social and infrastructure problems, citing estimates that only 15 per cent of each rupee allocated to social spending reaches the needy.Distribution of resources needed to be done by local councils, or panchyats, that would have better accountability, he said.Finance Minister P Chidambaram admitted on the weekend to the same meeting that India would fail to meet some UN Millennium Development Goals set for 2015 covering hunger, literacy and poverty reduction.India also needs to stop the massive migration to the cities that are becoming unlivable, Aiyar warned.”We must take (job and education) opportunities to rural India” using such tools as information technology, he said.Seventy percent of the population lives in rural areas but by 2025 the urban population will be 40 per cent, the summit report said.”Right now people prefer to live life in utterly filthy” conditions in the cities because they feel opportunities are better, Aiyar said.India’s financial and entertainment capital Mumbai is home to Asia’s largest slums in which 60 per cent of the city’s population of 18 million live.Half a million people migrate each year to India’s capital which has a population of around 16 million “to eke out a living,” piling pressure on the city’s already scarce power and water supplies, said New Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit.Nampa-AFP”Here we are kissing 10 per cent growth and instead of living standards rising, they are falling (for many),” minister for local governments Mani Shankar Aiyar told the India Economic Summit in New Delhi that wound up yesterday.”India is becoming prosperous but not Indians,” Aiyar said.The boom is “disproportionately affecting a small percentage of the population,” Aiyar said, noting despite strong growth, India sank in the Human Development Index to 128th place from 126 last year.While summit speakers have been upbeat about business prospects, they have also reminded delegates that India has no room for complacency.A quarter of Indians exist below the poverty line with most living off small subsistence farms, delegates were told at the summit, whose theme is how to reshape India in an “inclusive and sustainable way.A report prepared by the summit, part of the World Economic Forum in Davos, listed a litany of challenges.India’s crumbling infrastructure is stretched to its limits, it said.The country has 18 per cent of the world’s population but only four percent of the planet’s water and demand for water will exceed supply by 2050.”Eighty per cent of Indians don’t have access to proper sanitation, most don’t have access to power,” said Anand Mahindra, vice chairman of giant Indian truckmaker Mahindra & Mahindra.India accounts for one-third of the world’s illiterates with just 64 per cent of adults able to read.Aiyar blamed a lazy, bumbling and sometimes corrupt bureaucracy for many social and infrastructure problems, citing estimates that only 15 per cent of each rupee allocated to social spending reaches the needy.Distribution of resources needed to be done by local councils, or panchyats, that would have better accountability, he said.Finance Minister P Chidambaram admitted on the weekend to the same meeting that India would fail to meet some UN Millennium Development Goals set for 2015 covering hunger, literacy and poverty reduction.India also needs to stop the massive migration to the cities that are becoming unlivable, Aiyar warned.”We must take (job and education) opportunities to rural India” using such tools as information technology, he said.Seventy percent of the population lives in rural areas but by 2025 the urban population will be 40 per cent, the summit report said.”Right now people prefer to live life in utterly filthy” conditions in the cities because they feel opportunities are better, Aiyar said.India’s financial and entertainment capital Mumbai is home to Asia’s largest slums in which 60 per cent of the city’s population of 18 million live.Half a million people migrate each year to India’s capital which has a population of around 16 million “to eke out a living,” piling pressure on the city’s already scarce power and water supplies, said New Delhi chief minister Sheila Dixit.Nampa-AFP