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UN report all praise for UPA govt's aam admi agenda

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Prasad Nichenametla New Delhi
The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's emphasis on the "aam admi" in economic planning has received praise from the United Nations.
 
Compared with other countries in the Asia-Pacific, including China, India has shown a better "pro-poor" growth, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) has said in a recent report.
 
"The pro-poor growth of our survey denotes the extent to which economic growth helps lift people above the poverty line. The pro-poor index has relatively high values for India, especially for rural India," says the report, "Sustaining Growth and Sharing Prosperity."
 
Interestingly, the report says that the rising demand for skilled workers has made income distribution more uneven in urban areas. "In countries that grow very fast, such as India, the demand for these highly skilled workers is likely to increase faster than its supply, leading to higher increases in earnings of those workers compared with the unskilled workers," it said.
 
"It is then not too surprising to see that growth has been more pro-poor in India's rural areas compared to its urban areas. Nevertheless, the pro-poor growth index has been higher in India's urban areas than in most of the other countries under study," it added.
 
UNESCAP credits the growth in the nunber of skilled workers to the country's higher education policy.
 
"Besides creating opportunities for India's increasing leadership as a supplier of offshore services, the large number of skilled professionals must have helped provide highly skilled workers for domestic industries, preventing an excessive increase in their earnings compared to unskilled workers, avoiding a very large deterioration in distribution of income," it said.
 
On rural economy, though the survey does not really capture recent policies that boosted employment and growth, the report says schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme are likely to be strongly pro-poor as they explicitly target the lower-income segments of the rural economy.
 
About the challenges India is facing with regards to pro-poor growth, UNESCAP said, "The main challenge for India is to improve the standard of living of the poor, most of whom live in rural areas. The NREGP is a step in the right direction."
 
The report compliments India and Bangladesh for improving schooling outcomes and health services through programmes like mid-day meal and says there is a need for more targeted policy interventions and programmes.
 
"With the region's unprecedented growth, it is time to take decisive steps to share prosperity and end poverty and inequality," UNESCAP said.
 
The report said widening inequalities in income were a concern and high economic growth was not benefiting the poor proportionately. "The rich are becoming richer faster than the poor are becoming less poor.
 
The Gini coefficient, a popular measure of inequality, shows that inequality has increased over the past 10 years in 15 out of 21 countries. So, high economic growth does not always benefit the poor proportionately," it said.

 
 

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First Published: Apr 10 2008 | 12:00 AM IST

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