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<u>A Planning Commission Perspective</u><br><i>Roti, kapda aur makan </i>for all
Dr. M.S. Kapadia
India 2020 will be bustling with energy, entrepreneurship and innovation. The country's 1.35 billion people will be better fed, better clothed and better housed; they will be better educated; and, they will be healthier and live longer than any generation in the country's long history. Illiteracy and all major contagious diseases will have disappeared. School enrolment from ages 6 to 14 will be near 100 per cent and dropout rates will fall to less than 1 in 20.
A second productivity revolution in Indian agriculture, coupled with diversification to commercial crops, agri-business, processing industries and agro-exports, and massive efforts towards afforestation and wasteland development will generate abundant farm and non-farm employment opportunities for the rural workforce.
The increasingly congested urban traffic will be motorised as never before. Two-wheelers will be ubiquitous and cars will be considered essential for most middle class families. City and rural roads will improve substantially in number, capacity and quality, but a four-fold increase in the number of vehicles will stretch the urban infrastructure to the limit.
Cell phones, computers and the Internet will permeate every aspect of life and every corner of the country. Computerisation of education will dramatically improve the quality of instruction and the pace of learning, so that many students will complete the first 12 years of school curriculum in as little as eight. Computerisation in government will streamline procedures and response time to a degree unimaginable now.
India will be much more integrated with the global economy and will be a major player in terms of trade, technology and investment.
The compounded effect of achieving the targeted annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 8.5 to 9 per cent over the next 20 years will result in a quadrupling of the real per capita income and almost eliminate the percentage of Indians living below the poverty line. This will raise India's rank in terms of GDP from around 11 today to 4 from the top, in 2020, among 207 countries in the World Development Report. Further, in terms of per capita GDP measured in PPP, India's rank will rise by a minimum of 53 from the present 153 to 100. This means that India will move from low-income to an upper middle-income country.
Major issues
Demography: A marked slowdown in birth rates will leave the under-15 population at roughly the same size as it is today (i.e. increase by 0.2 per cent per annum). This means that the pressure for expansion of the educational system will come only from increasing enrolment and efforts to reduce dropout rates.
The population over 60 years of age will double from 60 to 120 million people (i.e. around 3.5 per cent per annum). This will necessitate the adoption of special measures to support this vulnerable group, which will include a high percentage of illiterates and who are especially susceptible to both malnutrition and health-related problems. Unequal rates of population and economic growth are likely to further aggravate regional disparities within the country.
India's greatest challenge will be to provide employment opportunities for all job seekers. The working age population will expand by about 45 per cent, spurring rapid growth of the labour force and the number of job seekers. Major changes in economic policy and strategy will be needed to eliminate the current backlog of more than 34 million unemployed job seekers and assure employment. India's vision for 2020 must be founded on the premise of 'Jobs for All'. The largest number of new jobs will be created by small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The country's urban population is expected to rise from 28 per cent to 40 per cent of the total population by 2020, placing increasing strain on the country's urban infrastructure. Future growth is likely to concentrate in and around 60 to 70 large cities having a population of one million or more. Decentralisation of municipal governance and greater reliance on institutional financing and capital markets for resource mobilisation are likely to increase the disparity between the larger and smaller urban centres.
Infrastructure: Development involves a continuous increase in the number of physical transactions and the speed with which they occur, both of which are highly dependent on the size and quality of the nation's transport system. Based on the projected GDP growth of 8 per cent per annum, the total freight traffic is likely to reach five times the level in 2000. Passenger traffic is expected to increase more than four-fold over the next 20 years.
The total demand for power is expected to increase by another 3.5 times or more in the next two decades, which will necessitate a tripling of installed generation capacity from 101,000 to 292,000 mw by 2020. Greater reliance on renewable energy sources offers enormous economic, social and environmental benefits.
India has 16 per cent of the world's population but just 4 per cent of its water resources. At the national level, current water resources are more than sufficient to meet the demand, but future projections show that the supply situation could become difficult over the next half century. The total water consumption is expected to rise by 20-40 per cent over the next 20 years.
Environment: Environmental issues will remain a serious concern. Urban air pollution will come under control by strict enforcement of motor vehicle emission standards and widespread use of ethanol-blended motor fuels, but water shortages in major metropolitan areas will continue despite a national programme to popularise water-harvesting techniques in both urban and rural areas.
<u>A Planning Commission Perspective</u><br><i>Roti, kapda aur makan </i>for all
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