India Fails to Attract Global Economic Players despite Emerging Markets

Dr Amir Ullah Khan, who is a Developmental Economist, Director Research at Aequitas and serves as   policy adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wadhwani Institute of Sustainable Healthcare, while speaking on “Development Paradoxes and The Indian Economy – How Economic Growth Impacts Social and Regional Inequalities?,” said that the study of Post-Sachar evaluation reveals that nothing much has changed for the Muslims. This remark was made on the basis of Central Government’s study of Post-Sachar evaluation committee where he was also part of it and which was headed by Professor Amitabh Kundu. It became popular as Kundu Committee which was submitted to the new government in 2014.
Opening up the discussion, he raised some thought provoking questions as to why India is important in the eyes of global economic players and why there are optimism and disappointment as well and what are the challenges. Amir Ullah was speaking at a programme organised by Forum for Discussion on Economic Issues (FDEI), a joint forum of Sahulat and Radiance Viewsweekly in the national capital on 9 April. The idea of this forum was envisaged by Dr Muhammad Nejatullah Siddiqui.
With the help of pictorial representation, he explained that in 2015 India was a very small middle-class market as compared to the rest of the world. But in 2016 India is most likely to become the biggest middle-class market in the world. This is why India becomes important. But what is being ignored is that at the same time there are many obstacles in our potential and strength which has to be addressed accordingly before it is too late. Just because of this while there is a lot of optimism there is a lot of disappointment as well. Despite huge potential, India has been unable to attract what it deserves.
From another graph, he emphasised the fact that although India was nowhere in the top ten in 2005 from the tally showed, but by 2040 India is certainly going to be the third biggest economy in the world. Presently India is the seventh largest economy in the world. From 1950 to 1990 India’s income growth was not significant but after 1995, the growth has exponentially increased. Till last year, India was in the group of lower income countries and this year it has moved to middle-income countries.
Amir Ullah also said that the first biggest problem India has faced is that all the improvement that has taken place is only in Urban India and therefore, there is a huge problem in rural areas. In the last budget speech made by Arun Jaitley, 70 per cent of the emphasis was on the rural India. It is quite surprising because this Government has always laid emphasis on urban India. The present Government has now realised that because of neglecting rural areas the party performed badly in Bihar. It has never happened that the Supreme Court has strongly asked the federal government to release money of Rural Employment Guarantee Act immediately. All the gains of past economic growth have been concentrated on urban areas.
Earlier, developmental economists worldwide had decided that that the only solution to poverty is urbanisation. The more urban a country gets, the lesser poor it becomes. Therefore, it was for the country to urbanise fast.  In 1950, India was more urbanised than China. Now, 60 per cent of people in China live in urban areas whereas only 35 per cent people in India live in urban areas. The lowest per cent of people in urban areas is in India. Experts are concerned as to why the pace of Indian urbanisation is very slow.
Amir Ullah further said in general, we believe that many people are migrating to the cities or urban areas from villages but the fact is it is not happening. India’s urbanisation in the recent past is much slower than India’s urbanisation in the 70s and 80s. The new data of migration is quite interesting and surprising as well. Ten years before there were 40000 villages where nobody lived. Now there are 80000 such villages. The migration is, therefore, taking place from smaller village to bigger village which is unique.
According to Amir Ullah, Muslim population on an average is higher in urban areas. Average Indian population that lives in urban areas is 30 per cent whereas Muslims are 39 per cent. But there has been least growth of Muslims in urban areas. The migration of Muslims is least and there it becomes important to know why they are not migrating. That the entire Muslim population has got no enough land is why they are not migrating. Why is India itself not urbanising? This is not only the question of Muslims. India itself is not urbanising fast enough and therefore, India’s growth is getting impacted. Muslims are urbanising even slower and therefore their incomes are getting impacted even more.
According to a finding by Oxford Policy Index, Madhya Pradesh is the poorest country in the world and the poorest villages in India are in Maharashtra, Karnataka and the poorest village in India is in Gujarat. With the help of figures and data of poverty, education and sex ratio, he tried to highlight pros and cons of the development of economy and its impact on the communities and society at the village level, cities, and states and in the entire country.
Amir Ullah, while replying to a question as to why there is disparity in rural and urban areas when the values of vote remain same and rural voters are more than urban voters, told Radiance that India is a democratic country; one fails to understand why there is disparity when rural votes are more as compared to urban votes and many social scientists are trying to find reasonable answer on the disparity.
The programme was followed by a brainstorming session wherein many participants put forward their views and reflected on the subject. JIH Ameer Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Omari, Naib Ameer T Arif Ali, Media Secretary Arshad Shaikh, renowned thinker Dr Javed Jamil, BIP Secretary Dr Waquar Anwar, Sahulat Vice-President Arshad Ajmal, Radiance Editor-in-Chief Ejaz Ahmed Aslam, Manager Kamal Ahmad, Dr Salim Khan, and many others were among the dignitaries present on the occasion.