Rising wealth disparity has blurred the road map for the Indian growth story, renowned economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Thursday.
Ridiculing the obsession of countries with the gross domestic product (GDP), Stiglitz, who has been critical of globalisation, said, “The world has been in pursuit of what I have called GDP fetish — the belief that development is simply the increase of the GDP.”
Indian economy expanded at its slowest pace in more than two years in the July-September quarter, at 6.9 per cent, from a year-ago period, the Nobel Prize-winning American noted, while talking at the convocation ceremony of the Indian Statistical Institute here.
“There is no clear road map to where India is going today. Fifty years from now, does it see itself much as it is today — a divided country, only with the rich much richer, the poor perhaps a little better than they are today?” he said. “Does it see itself evolving like the US, where even the middle (class) has not been sharing in the gains of the growth? India’s eight per cent growth rate has been truly impressive. GDP could be going up, even though most individuals in society could be getting worse off, as has been going in the US.”
The 68-year-old Columbia University professor slammed the electoral process in India with rich having an influence on the outcome.
Arguing against total liberalisation of the Indian capital market, Stiglitz said there was evidence that such liberalisation does not lead to faster growth, but it does lead to more instability and inequalities.
There was a need for another green revolution for food sufficiency in India, albeit in accordance with environmental concerns, he said.
“There is great scope for further increases in productivity even with existing technology: China’s productivity per hectare, for instance, is 2.5 times that of India,” he said.
Stiglitz applauded the Indian Food Security Bill, and said the country was leading the way for the rest of the world and is on the verge of a historic implementation of the world’s largest social protection programme against hunger, just as rural employment scheme was the largest social protection programme against unemployment.
“India prides itself on its democracy. But can there be a real or meaningful democracy with the large economic divides that are emerging today in the US and elsewhere, where the wealthy use their money to have an undue influence in shaping perceptions and beliefs, and this is the outcome of electoral process?” he said.
