While Prime Minister Narendra Modi justified his Government’s economic policies by saying a “handful of people” are trying to spread a contagion of pessimism, but in Bengaluru, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the economic reforms and its process was still incomplete and called for a new design for the country’s social and economic policy.
He said, “The policy should be a judicious mix of both high rate of economic growth and a strong focus on containing economic inequalities.” Singh is considered the architect of the economic liberalisation measures unleashed in 1991. He was speaking at the inauguration of the academic session of ‘Bengaluru BR Ambedkar School of Economics’ on Wednesday.
“Development planning and the Planning Commission were designed to ensure that while our economy grew, inequalities did not grow. With the abolition of the Planning Commission fresh efforts have to be made to keep inequality under control,” Singh said.
He said the economic liberalisation that he was associated with in 1991-96 and 2004-2014 was above all the process of opening of new opportunities for people born without social and economic privileges. Singh was the finance minister in the Narasimha Rao Government during 1991-96 and the prime minister for a 10-year period from 2004.
Singh said “This was for me the guiding beacon behind our economic reforms.”
“I must confess that the process is still incomplete and we need a lot of fresh thinking to work out a new design for our social and economic policy which will be a judicious mix of both high rate of economic growth and a strong focus on containing the growth of economic inequalities, and working actively to reduce so,” he said.
Former RBI Governor and Chairman of Madras School of Economics C Rangarajan, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and others were present at the inauguration of the academic session that began with 50 students.
Singh noted that the institution was named after BR Ambedkar who was a great legal luminary, a great economist and a social reformer.
Singh said it should be combined with the high rate of economic growth, employment generation at a phase “which is robust enough to get rid of unemployment in a reasonable period of time, protect our environment, control of pollution of our natural resource like land, water and air, and having a due regard to the quest of social justice and equality.
Former RBI Governor R Rangarajan speaking at the inauguration of academic session of Bengaluru BR Ambedkar School of Economics (BASE) here, said the country suffered in GDP growth as the gap of investment rate of productivity of capital had widened.
He took the example of the investment rate in the economy in 2007-08 when the economy grew at 9.4 per cent plus 38 per cent of the GDP, but according to the latest estimates it was 27.4 per cent. “So there is decline in investment rates. That is much of the cause on technical problem of growth in the investment rates. And also increase in incremental capital concentration.’’