Current socioeconomic affairs and trends

70% of our populace lives in rural areas and therefore finds its existence directly or indirectly dependent on the agricultural industry. The vast majority of these people are small farmers or landless agricultural labors.

1. The firm grip of a deeply entrenched caste-based feudal system, the near total dependence on timely monsoons and constantly decreasing individual land-holdings due to the rise in population has forced most of these farmers into subsistence farming.
2. The lack of capital has ensured that our small farmers remain deprived of technological advances, which would help conserve and apply resources efficiently and increase productivity.
3. Due to their electoral compulsions, Politicians of all hues have always looked upon farmers as vote-banks of uneducated, needy people who can be easily swayed by pre-election promises of freebies. There have been a host of such superficial measures like the distribution of very small ‘loans’ with no intention of recovery, forcing banks to lend, with the unstated promise of writing these loans off in the future, providing free electricity etc.
4. Excessive political interference in the Agricultural sector has led to utter mismanagement of every aspect of this industry; be it the management of resources, measures to increase productivity, adequate infrastructure to enable efficient and timely off-take, transportation and storage of farm produce, the freedom to set prices and choose markets, the setting up of efficient distribution networks and so on. The arbitrary opening and closing of export opportunities and such other man-made calamities render the scenario hopelessly entangled and complex.
5. These short-sighted measures have only hurt the real interests of the farmer. They have succeeded in crippling him mentally by convincing him that he is forever going to be the government’s responsibility. They have crippled him physically by destroying his credibility irrepairably in the eyes of the banking system. The average Indian farmer has never been allowed to even realise that he is an entrepreneur.
6. The farmer is hence doomed to borrow from private moneylenders at unrealistic rates of interest, and some day collapse under the burden of debt. His natural inborn desire for a life with a modicum of self-esteem and dignity then drives him to the only viable option – suicide. The major and vitally important chunk of our population thus remains vulnerable to the whims of social, environmental and political forces.
7. In a nation of a billion people, an extraordinarily tiny percentage, about 3% belongs to the organised sector. What this means is that a huge bloc of people are living and working, producing and adding value outside the ambit of the organised, and therefore documented sector. When we speak of industrial workers, we shall therefore take into account all those employed for their physical skills in every possible kind of industry, enterprise or household, ‘organised’ or otherwise.
8. Industrial workers are primarily migrants or descendants of migrants from rural areas. The emergence of strong labour movements and unions provided a good degree of protection to those in the organised sector, but it was never available to those in the un-organised sector.
9. Local and global competition has heated up with the gradual withdrawal of governmental controls. With the entry of more and more international players in all sectors, the emphasis has shifted from manipulation to efficiency, quality and competitiveness.
10. A weak rural economy means lack of purchasing power, which in turn means low demand. This is an important cause of poor industrial growth. Thousands of units across the country have folded up due to poor demand, weak management and lack of resources to cope up with the changing environment. This has resulted in ever-increasing unemployment. Working for wages has become as risky and insecure a profession as running a business.
11. As import duties and thereby the protection to local industry comes down (courtesy-GATT), it will become viable and more profitable for large local industrialists to actually move their production bases abroad to countries with low taxation and export to India. The result? More unemployment in India. This process has already begun.
12. Lay-offs and Voluntary retirement schemes have come to stay. The question is are we even aware of the disastrous social implications of hundreds of thousands of able-bodied people with a newfound short-lived spending capacity and a blank future thereafter? In the absence of a strong Social Security system, laid-off workers are often pushed directly out on the streets, fighting for survival.
13. Agriculture and Industry are the two engines of our economy. Millions of farmers and workers are actively and productively involved in driving these engines. It is extremely tragic and dangerous that they are suffering a painfully unstable existence.
14. Can a prosperous minority afford to sleep in peace while the vast majority is insecure and teetering on the brink of survival?

1. When our country adopted the socialistic economic model after Independence, the Government entered business of all kinds – from operating mines to running hotels. This was the single most powerful factor influencing industrial growth in India for almost forty years thereafter.
2. The presence of these inefficient monopolistic giants owned by the Government coupled with the License-permit-quota Raj made complete mockery of free enterprise in the country. Only those with a strong capital base could survive and those who mastered the art of manipulating the system could thrive.
3. Over the years, India became established as one of the poor, developing Asian countries, which was perpetually starved for goods of all kinds. Quality was unheard of. On one hand there were millions of people employed in the textile industry, and on the other, the smuggling of cloth into the country was profitable business.
4. A bloodthirsty system of taxation would result in evasion and dwindling revenues. The leadership would panic and increase taxes, and thus drive more people towards evasion. This vicious downward spiral continues till date.
5.  The resources engaged in Tax Management do not add any value to the product or services sold by Business and Industry. The burden of maintaining Excise and Taxation departments diverted precious resources from R & D and Quality enhancement. All Creativity and Innovativeness was directed towards inventing new means of tax evasion, rather than product development and excellence.
6. Local industry as a whole is globally uncompetitive – but for a few notable exceptions- in the global arena. A succession of such economically feeble governments resulted in the lack of infrastructure, which has proved disastrous for industrial growth.
7. As Government owned enterprise sunk into the red and the private sector struggled to exist against all odds, foreign companies circled our skies, swooping down and grabbing every opportunity that they could.
8. With the signing of the GATT, foreign companies will not have to even knock at our doors any more. They have the whole market, cheap labour, incentives of all kinds theirs for the asking. They see eager and welcoming governments, state and central, pushing and shoving each other for attention, and begging for investment. And as their competition, these companies usually have the harassed and frustrated and crippled local industry.
9. Professionals and self- employed individuals are essentially entrepreneurs who employ intellectual capital, creative faculties or physical skills. This class of people have their own unique set of problems. They do not have the support base of a business organisation, a large number of them live from one day to the next and cannot create substantial assets over a lifetime of working. They have no pension plans, no social security to take care of them when they can no longer work.
10. With the opening up of our markets, there is all kinds of competition coming in from other countries. Professionals and self-employed people will have to upgrade their skills and compete or perish. Without easy access to cheap capital, they do not stand a chance in the difficult times ahead.
11. The gradual implementation of GATT is irreversible. It is bound to influence our entire existence. The question is, are we equipped to withstand those stresses and come through alive?

Whether one likes it or not, Globalisation is here. It is deemed desirable for some reasons and hated for some. The reason that evokes the strongest feelings of hatred is invariably the cultural and thereby social impact of Globalisation. The pressures of survival increasingly uproot people and send them to distant places in search of jobs and business.

1. This has a direct impact on the traditional structure of our society. The ‘joint family’ breaks up and young couples go ‘nuclear’. One greatly important and tragic casualty in this process is the dignity of the old and the infirm.
2. Those who have retired from their jobs and business due to old age and poor health, those who worked at home all their lives but are incapable of working any more, those who are not fortunate enough to have an adequate lifelong pension and even those who could never work all their lives in the mainstream because they were handicapped in some way. All these people form a large chunk of our population.
3. Then there are the vast multitudes of rural poor, landless labourers working in the unorganised sector, the rural and urban unemployed, the widows and orphans, the victims of natural calamities, riots and disastrous accidents. There are desperately poor and malnourished tribals whose traditional life-support systems are fast vanishing, the fishermen who are fighting a losing battle with the brutal forces of ecological disturbance and pollution. There are victims of diseases ranging from leprosy to AIDS who society refuses to accept, but are here to stay anyway. All these and the rest of the citizens who are economically backward for various reasons are struggling from one day to the next without hope. We seem to have the ingredients of a full-scale civil war here. Indeed, it is a miracle of sorts that it has not already broken out.
4. A recent study showed that India is currently one of the ‘youngest’ countries in the world, meaning a large chunk of our population is between 25 and 45 years of age. This is considered to be ‘lucky’ and is of great economic importance. The flip side is that due to the current social trends of late marriages and family planning, after say the next twenty years, we will have one of the world’s largest ‘old’ populations, like some European countries today. At that time, the support systems provided by the traditional joint family will have practically disappeared. The big question that looms upon us is how will all these people fend for themselves in their old age?
5. Most developed countries have put in place Social Security systems of varying efficiency. In India, there is no such system. Even the Pension paid to retired Government servants (a minute fraction of the population) is an unbearable burden on the treasury. There is no provision of a ‘Survival allowance’ for the unemployed. There is no assured and adequate income to enable a physically/mentally/economically handicapped person live with bare minimum dignity. It is nothing but a paucity of funds and resources that stands between such a comprehensive Social security system and our Society.

The reason for clubbing these two groups of people together is that, barring a few exceptions, both are disconnected physically and therefore mentally from economic activity of any kind. Both are affected by malfunctioning of the Economy, as greatly or more than other segments of the population, without even knowing it. Both are unorganised, extremely vulnerable and have no tools or weapons to safeguard their interests. And lastly, both are dependent on others for their basic survival needs.

1. Youth are the future of the nation and therefore it is crucial that they are looked upon as the most important segment of our society. All expenditure made for the betterment of youth is an investment in the future of the country. 
2. Every person up to the age of 18, irrespective of caste, creed or economic background deserves as a matter of right, an assured access to food, clothing, shelter, healthcare and education up to high school level. Facilities for higher education, vocational courses and training for alternate careers in the creative arts or sports etc. should be easily accessible and affordable thereafter.  
3. Unfortunately, our youth have been the most neglected lot. One of the best indicators of this fact could be India’s tally of medals in the Olympics and other International sport competitions. The absence of good infrastructure for all-round development of youth for all these years has resulted in campus politics getting firmly entrenched as the number one extra-curricular activity. The very nature of this activity takes a heavy toll of the moral values, social attitudes and academic achievements of the young people involved.
4. The ever widening chasm between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ results in thousands of poor children and youngsters dropping out and working in terrible conditions to earn for their survival. We have the world’s largest number of child laborers. It is obvious that the primary and secondary schooling system is hopelessly inadequate.
5. At the graduation level, it is evident that those who design and regulate the system have lost their sense of direction completely. Year after year, hundreds of Degree colleges churn out thousands of ‘graduates’ with useless certificates, utter misfits in the real world. They are ill -equipped for the job market and have only two options – to keep acquiring more degrees and qualifications if they can afford them or join the swelling ranks of the unemployed.
6. Engineering and Medical education has become a tortuous ordeal for those who aspire for it. Every step of the way is laden with uncertainty. The scene is one of Donations, bribery, nepotism, leaking question papers, arbitrary rulings by Authorities which directly affect the future of thousands of students and a helpless, economically disabled government watching as ‘Education Barons’ make hay.
7. Thousands of our brightest brains compete for entering the IITs and IIMs every year. Only a few hundred get through –and soon after passing out, most of them leave the country in exchange for a fat pay packet. They see no future for themselves in the circumstances prevailing in their country. Millions of rupees of taxpayers’ money therefore subsidises the education and training of the best young minds in the country, for the sole use of multinational corporations in other countries.
8. All those who manage to cross all the hurdles and scrape through to the ‘finish’ line, find themselves face to face with a monster called Unemployment. The rate at which the numbers of employable youth are added every year is much more than the rate at which jobs are created. The non-availability of capital and absence of infrastructure effectively extinguishes any sparks of entrepreneurship that may exist.
9. In the midst of an ever shrinking job market, difficult and risky business environment and inexorable buildup of the pressure to start earning, migration begins to look like panacea for our youth. Day and night, they dream of escaping, and disconnect from the country and its future. Those without the ability to migrate are a moment’s frustration away from addiction, crime, prostitution and general unrest. This segment is part of the pool of talent from which the society’s leadership of tomorrow will invariably emerge.
10. Women have been enshrined in our culture as eternal symbols and sources of motherhood, love and care. Unfortunately, as a nation we have an extremely poor record of recognising and upholding women’s rights.
11. Women’s education took off barely fifty or sixty years ago and a huge gap exists between the actual and the ideal. Meanwhile, due to the lack of empowering education and awareness, the majority of women continue to directly bear the brunt of every possible malfunctioning of the Economy, Society and Family.
12. The traditional responsibility of women in the family is that of management of the family and household. Because of her upbringing, she is programmed to automatically address the needs of other family members and ends up neglecting her own physical and emotional needs. The majority of Indian women are anemic, deficient of several important nutrients, suffering from all kinds of physical and emotional disorders without even knowing it.
13. The lack of basic infrastructure affects a woman directly when fulfilling her day-to-day responsibilities. In rural areas, it is common for women to walk for miles in the hot desert sun for half a bucket of water. The same scarcity of water is equally common in urban areas too. So here we have housewives waiting in long queues for the taps to yield the daily quota. People getting killed in slums over ‘tap water disputes’ is not unheard of.
14. The lack of infrastructure hits business and industry from the other direction and the resulting closure and unemployment affects the woman indirectly when the earning member of the family loses his job. She then has to move out of the house and do her bit to earn as income. This could be by working at domestic jobs, working as farm laborers, gathering and selling firewood etc. No matter what economic strata a woman belongs to, her problems are essentially the same. The worst part is that she is unorganised and has no means to change her circumstances. She remains to be trapped in a painful and vulnerable existence, at the mercy of the people around her.
15. The powerful influence of the parallel economy has strengthened criminal elements and their gangs. Women are the direct sufferers of the resultant poisoning of the social environment.
16. The worst tragedy is that the tremendous amount of work and value addition that a woman puts in at home all her life, the sacrifices that she silently makes and the financial and human management skills that she develops and uses so unassumingly remain hidden from the limelight. Nothing is accounted for, or appreciated nor is it taken into consideration for calculating economic indicators. And that is why she is nowhere in the picture when there are discussions on Social Security schemes or Old Age pension schemes. The fact is that Woman is the stabiliser, the sheet anchor of society at the micro level and therefore a prime candidate for Social Security.
17. Instead, we see woman being exploited, blackmailed, raped, widowed, bought, sold, forced to beg, forced into prostitution and abandoned when they have ceased being desirable. The darkest hour in the entire history of our glorious civilisation is upon us – because we do not think twice before killing unborn females. Why do we do it? Purely because a girl is seen as an ‘economic liability’!
18. A well-known slogan goes - “If you educate a boy, you educate a man. If you educate a girl, you educate a family…” Surely a female can get education in our country today. But that is only if she can manage to take birth without getting killed, then overcome all kinds of social obstacles and discrimination, financial difficulties, domestic priorities and find a system of education and employment which will empower her. And all she can do about it today is hope that a handful of NGOs can tackle the whole mountain of problems.

1. The middle class has always looked at business as a risky and stressful proposition. They are also convinced that one needs to be very cunning and manipulative to succeed at business. These people turned to salaried jobs as an occupation mainly because it was perceived as a stable and secure profession. The other attractive points were the facility to live an honest, stress-free and risk-free life.
2. Life for salaried people was traditionally defined as ‘nine-to-five’ and they were also seen to enjoy all weekly and government holidays. It meant a pre-determined career path defined by the employer organisation followed by a decent retirement package, which one either planned and saved for or got automatically if working in the government.
3. Unfortunately, the Government began to impose one tax after the other. People began evading tax by all means possible. All those who could conceal income, did so. One day, the salaried class woke up and found itself quite alone. Almost everyone else had slipped out of the system – partly or fully. The salaried class remained trapped helplessly in their ‘secure’ jobs.
4. Every year, at the budget presentation, the salaried class cringes in terror for the latest taxes unleashed by the government. They know that they have no place to hide. All taxes finally affect only those who live in the white economy, namely the salaried class.
5. With the advent of globalisation, the traditional concepts of ‘job security’ and ‘risk free life’ have changed forever. In these times of mergers, buyouts, closures and disinvestment, no job is secure. Working in a salaried job has become as risky and stressful as running a business.
6. Employment opportunities are reducing because of various factors like advanced technology (automation) and skills getting redundant. This has led to tremendous competition in the workplace and outside it. The ‘nine-to-five’ job is a thing of the past. Regular weekly holidays are history.
7. Is the salaried employee ever going to be freed from this slowly tightening noose of taxation?

All that a citizen expects from his government and leadership is

1. A stable environment to live and work.
2. Affordable access to Food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education and capital.
3. A clean and transparent political system which will respond to citizen’s aspirations.
4. A strong and fair law-enforcement system and prompt judiciary.
5. The reliable ‘safety net’ of a social security system to fall back on in times of natural calamities or other unforeseen possibilities in the future.

1. When India got Independence in 1947, we adopted a democratic system of government. The real windfall however, were the Administrative systems, Stock exchanges, Reserve Bank and the banking system, the Railway network, disciplined and non-political Armed Forces and a host of other Institutions that we inherited. The Indian Constitution is considered to be one of the best in the world today.
2. In keeping with the Socialistic model of Economy that was adopted, the Government spent billions of rupees and established itself as a monopoly or the largest player in almost all segments. The principle behind this was to plough back the profits by way of infrastructure development etc. and ensure the general upliftment of the weaker sections of society without excessively taxing the affluent.
3. Unfortunately, the leaders who envisaged this scheme had overlooked the small possibility of the PSUs being mismanaged, making huge losses or ridiculously low profits, becoming burdens on the exchequer rather than contributing to it. That is what happened in almost all but a few cases.
4. The revenue deficit refused to go away, and the government resorted increasingly to taxation as a means of generating revenue. The original socialistic dream soon got derailed. The PSUs became drains on the economy while the public suffered with the introduction of every new tax.
5. Large scale tax evasion followed. This created black money, which in turn gave birth to the Parallel Economy. All citizens, taxpaying or non-tax paying, honest or dishonest are today never more than a step away from the ever- lengthening shadow of the Parallel economy.
6. Thanks to the Movement for Freedom, our country got great leaders to head its government in the initial years. They were eminent people with great strength of character. There were lawyers, educationists, social workers and activists largely drawn from the educated middle class. Unfortunately, when economic power passed into the hands of the Parallel Economy, all kinds of people with very poor credentials began to get attracted to politics from the outer fringes of respectable society. These elements had the clout of black money at their disposal and gradually good citizens were left with the options of getting pushed out of the political process or sourcing funds from the parallel economy in order to survive.
7. Political Leaders have today lost their credibility in the eyes of the citizen. This has a direct bearing on the public standing of the Government and its various arms. The single biggest factor that strikes terror in the heart of a citizen is the knowledge that even departments like the Police etc. which are critically important for Social security can be easily influenced by those with enough money.
8. Because of the fiscal deficit, the Government has had to rely excessively on external borrowings and as is currently fashionable, FDI. It is only natural for the lender to influence our spending policies to ensure timely debt servicing. This influence is seen in the repeated attempts to curtail subsidies. This in most cases has a very painful social consequence.
9. Inadvertent promotion of Anti-social businesses and industries Like Liquor, Cigarette, Tobacco, Lottery etc.: The very high Excise duties levied on these products make them guaranteed sources of revenue and therefore important for the government despite terrible social consequences. 
10. The lack of Government spending in infrastructure has rendered local Industry incompetent.      
11. The disparity between haves and have-nots grows at a frightening pace. The inability of the Government to fulfil the most basic of needs of the common man is fuelling a general feeling of insecurity like never before.
12. Socio-political problems that are essentially rooted in economic backwardness eventually transform into full-blown law-and-order problems, e.g. the Naxalite movement, the insurgent movements in the North Eastern states.
13. Though it seems logical to blame the leadership for all that goes wrong with society, the fact is that we still have some very good political leaders in this country. It is the mechanism of governance that has ceased to be effective for the reasons given above. No matter how good the leaders are, the flawed system leaves them with very little ability to address the concerns of the common man.
14. The challenges thrown up by the process of globalisation call for great foresight, astute financial management and efficient marshalling of our resources. Do we have the strong leadership, vision and necessary mechanism to face these challenges successfully? 

The emotional and mental secession of honest citizens from this country is the first step to a full- scale exodus. Anarchy will no longer be something that exists in distant African or Latin American dictatorships. It is closing in on us with each passing moment and will explode in our faces when we are at our weakest.