India's Home Minister P Chidambaram today made a strong case for moving farm workforce to industry and services to make growth inclusive, saying that the agriculture sector which employs a large number of people cannot grow beyond 4 per cent in the long-term.
"We should move more and more workforce to services and industry....I think real problem is how do we shift bulk of the workforce in services and industry", he said in a discussion on inclusive growth organised by NDTV at the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting here.
Chidambaram, who was earlier Finance Minister, argued that as agriculture sector cannot grow beyond 4 per cent, it was necessary to move people to industry and services which have the potential of expanding at 12 per cent.
Admitting that leakages do occur in programmes run by the government, the Minister made a strong case for improving governance.
When quizzed by the participants on the quantum of leakages, Chidambaram said they varied from state to state and from programme to programme.
On wealth creation, he said, the government was never opposed to it. The real problem, he added, was re-distribution of wealth which is being done by programmes like rural employment guarantee scheme and universal education.
Chidambaram also said that unlike in China, there is a strong business lobby in India which is opposed to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in several sectors.
China, he added, did not have any domestic business lobby when it opened its economy to FDI.
Participating in the discussion, ICICI Bank Managing Director Chanda Kochhar said that the country needs to education people to make the growth inclusive.
"Merely giving loans to people is not enough. They should also have the ability to absorb and use funds", she added.
