The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Economic growth, social development must go hand in hand: Rangarajan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 25, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Economic growth, social development must go hand in hand: Rangarajan

Special Correspondent

“We need to grow at 8-9% a year for three decades for benefits of growth to trickle down”

— Photo: S.R. Raghunathan

ECONOMISTS MEET: (From left) Raja Chelliah, founder chairman, Madras School of Economics; D.K. Srivatsava, director, and C. Rangarajan, chairman, at the annual day celebrations in Chennai on Tuesday.

CHENNAI: Economic growth and social development should be in tandem; they are the two legs on which an economy walks, and therefore any strategy that ignores one of the two can only limp along, C. Rangarajan, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and chairman of the Madras School of Economics (MSE), has said.

Dr. Rangarajan said economic growth and social development, in a fundamental sense, were not opposed to each other. “It is true that economic growth by itself will not ensure social development. The trickle-down hypothesis will work only in certain circumstances. We need to grow at 8-9 per cent per annum for three decades, for the benefits of growth to trickle down.”

Rate of production

Accelerating the rate of production alone could generate the kind of resources needed to meet socio-economic goals, he said. It was possible to sustain a high growth of 8-9 per cent for the next couple of decades, given the structural features of the economy.

The objective conditions were favourable, but it still did not mean that growth would happen; it also depended on factors such as the availability of power and social and physical infrastructure.

Commenting on the state of higher education, Dr. Rangarajan called for expanding educational facilities, particularly at the higher education level, while providing for equity and quality. The MSE had applied for deemed university status, he said. He distributed certificates to the graduands and prizes to the top performers.

N. Ram, Editor-in-Chief, The Hindu, said that at one end, there were extremely optimistic impressions of India’s economic growth, while at the other, there were pre-occupations with basic livelihood issues and current foreign policy, including the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

He highlighted the need to take a balanced view and do a reality check in all domains; otherwise credibility gaps would open up, especially in relation to the mass deprivation challenge. There was a need to do much more than what had been done in recent years. The last National Family Health Survey highlighted the gloomy picture in terms of access to healthcare and immunisation coverage. The performance of the media in covering these issues was disappointing.

Mr. Ram launched the website of the MSE: http://advances.mse.ac.in.

Raja Chelliah, founder chairman, MSE, urged students to focus on issues of social development instead of the technical aspects of economics.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu