CONTOURS OF DEVELOPMENT




Photo - Village Kurar, Chamoli District, Uttarakhand

Mukesh Devrari 

Development is a wide concept. Developed nation means a nation where people have a better life. Anything and everything which contributes in improvising the lives of masses should be included in the wider definition of development. It has many determinants. Broadly all determinants can be divided into two categories. Firstly, tangible determinants which make our physical presence on earth comfortable. Secondly, non-tangible determinants which make our psychological presence on earth comfortable.

Most developing countries are lacking either both categories of determinants of development or any of them severely. India lacks tangible determinants more than it lacks intangible determinant. Our population lacks access to basic necessities of life like food, shelter, education, jobs and healthcare. It is terrible thing to argue for intangibles in a nation state which could not provide necessities of life to its citizens.

Once these necessities become accessible to all, state should endeavor to provide intangible determinants like freedom of choice, fundamental rights, protection of human rights, civil liberties, political liberties etc. Let me come to the specifics. India should plan and develop its economy in such a way that every individual should be guaranteed access to necessities of life. How it can be done. What should be the priorities of the government?

Government should primarily focus on health, education and jobs. Rest of the things can take care of itself. First is education. India is very poor country. One of the reasons is we started late. We have never prioritized investment in science, technology, engineering and innovation. We are socially in terrible state because we never encouraged free thinking and research in various fields of social sciences including economics.

We have political institutions but they are not disciplined because we as a nation state did not fund creation of world-class research institution and academies in the discipline of social sciences. As a nation-state we should heavily invest in education right from the primary school to university level. None of our universities features in the top 200 universities of the world. 1/5th of the world’s population lives in India. Ideally, we should have 20 universities in the top 100 global universities. It is not impossible. The only thing this country lacks is will power & big thinking. We ourselves are barrier in our progress.

Second is healthcare. It cannot be left for profiteering. Government should provide healthcare to one and all. State must provide health insurance to poorer sections of society. It should also open large hospitals on the lines of AIIMS around the country. Every district in the country must have one government medical college which must function as a hospital and research centre. A balance has to be established in private and public sector in healthcare industry.

India cannot afford to shirk away from its responsibilities towards its people. It is inhuman to let people die because they cannot afford healthcare. Any thought which hides or ignore or oppose universal healthcare programs through any perverted logic can only be described as barbarians.

Third priority of the government should be jobs. India needs to industrialize and urbanize itself as fast as it can. It should make it easy for industrialists to expand their business. We must promote foreign direct investment, reduce interest rates to spur demand, establish manufacturing sector to fulfill the internal consumption. Many states have been catapulted in last three decades due to the proper economic policies.

We should also encourage large investments in the strategic sector by public sector companies. Large infrastructure projects should be launched to energize the nation. India should become a hub of the high-end innovation. We should develop our own multinational brands. Jobs should be in abundance in any developed society.

end.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA OWNERSHIP AND ISSUES OF SOVEREIGNTY AND SECURITY

Image
Mukesh Devrari  Transnational media ownership means ownership of media assets by global corporate houses around the world. The word 'transnational' can easily be easily replaced with the term multinational. In other words, when a multinational company owns media companies around the globe that company can be described as a transnational media organization. There are plenty of such organizations, but most vilified among all is owned by Rupert Murdoch.  The nature of media is very different. As you all know media is a plural form of the medium. Production of films, TV serials, drama, theatre and other wings of the cultural industry are also owned by western media companies. Here, the meaning of the word transnational can be extended. Not necessarily western media companies own assets in the third world countries. They create their work in the west and sell it around the world.   It has long been a complaint against western media companies that wherever they go, they dev
Read more

BANNING TIKTOK SENDS RIGHT MESSAGE TO CHINA

Image
Mukesh Devrari   Banning Tiktok in India is without a doubt a great decision by BJP government after the killing of 20 Indian soldiers at the Line of Actual Control at Union Territory of Ladakh. Globally the Tiktok has been downloaded by more than 2 billion smartphone users and 30 per cent of its customers are in India. If the Tiktok will be replaced by an Indian company, only then this ban is worth it, other it is immaterial from India’s point of view. Otherwise, it makes no difference to our national interest whether the parent company is from the United States or China or Congo. Indian companies must intervene and capture the vacated market. They must offer similar apps to users. The Communist Party of China’s (CPC) aggression at the border gave this once in a lifetime opportunity for India’s businesses to capture the vacated spaces. The CPC is responsible for the global downfall of Tiktok & Huawei. First of all, China should use the opportunity of BJP havin
Read more

­Dawn’s discourses on perpetual Indo-Pakistan enmity

Mukesh Devrari  Abstract   This study is a thematic analysis of columns and editorials published in the opinion pages of Dawn during India’s general elections 2019 to find out how Pakistan’s elite media represents India as a perpetual adversary. It finds out that Dawn’s op-ed pages characterize India as a permanent security threat, destabilizing force, propagandist state, and dominating power conspiring with the United States to harm the interests of Pakistan and China. It also reveals that news columns and editorials consistently claim that Indian media indulges in warmongering, rising Hindu nationalism, and non-state actors contribute to the hostility in both nations. Finally, it notes that Dawn’s Op-ed pages describe India with the state lens in geopolitics and global power structure, mostly magnifying the state’s perspective instituted mainly by the security establishment.   (Keywords –Indo-Pakistan enmity, Dawn , media representation, media & conflict, thematic analysis)   In
Read more