Work to ease disparities, Manmohan tells scientists

Updated on: Monday, March 28, 2011

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday advised Indian managers and space scientists to work for reducing the social tensions and regional imbalance and disparities. “We should recognise,” he said, “that our high growth is not sustainable unless it is made more inclusive in a manner that helps to reduce social tensions and disparities,” Dr. Singh said, while delivering the 46th annual convocation address at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA).

Earlier, during his visit to the Space Applications Centre (SAC) here, Dr. Singh made a similar plea to the scientists. “Large scale poverty is the foremost challenge facing our country. The unfortunate truth is that the fruits of our growth are not equally shared among different segments of our society. We have to be acutely conscious of regional disparities and imbalances within the country, and address the inequalities that exist,” he said.
Achievements

After dwelling on various achievements of the country's space programmes including that they had “helped us to leapfrog in technology and bring significant social, economic and industrial transformations to the most remote areas in the country,” Dr. Singh said the space-based applications were very potent means for bridging the divides in society and it was necessary that the scientists worked towards reducing the cost of access to space. This required expediting the development of heavy lift launchers, advanced propulsion systems, including the cryogenic stage, and recoverable and reusable launch systems. “We should pay greater attention to the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Programme,” he said.

At the IIMA, Dr. Singh recalled his early days of economic reforms as the then Finance Minister and said the success of the reforms was evident today, in that not only had the country left behind the era of modest savings, low investments and low growth, but also India was now among the world's fastest growing economies, and “our savings and investment rates give us confidence that we can, with prudent policies and sound economic management, achieve sustained double-digit growth.”

Pointing out that India had now emerged as the “global centre for information technology, research, development and innovation,” Dr. Singh, however, felt the biggest achievement of the reforms was “change in our mindsets.” He said the education and opportunities had created unprecedented social and economic mobility and “revolutions of expectations and a surge of aspirations in young India.” Rural India no longer saw its problems as the sole responsibility of the government but was “seeking lives of greater dignity and well-being through the right to information, education and employment.”

But, he said, while the country should take pride in its successes, “we are also conscious of the many challenges.” The country, he said, “still has to deal with the problems of mass poverty, hunger and disease and corruption. We need to bridge the enormous infrastructure deficit, the regional divide, and the digital divide. We must ensure much greater penetration of quality and affordable social services. We have to create food and energy security for our teeming millions. We have to upgrade skills, and boost manufacturing in order to provide employment opportunities for our youth.”

Dr. Singh said there was no dearth of business opportunities in the country to keep a billion Indians well-fed, healthy and educated. “If we can provide them productive employment, we would have created one of the world's largest consumer markets,” he said. “The pace of reform in India will depend on how far the government policies meet the test of democratic consensus and take into account the vulnerabilities of different sections of our population.” He advised the companies undertaking green-field projects not to see their factories as “oases,” cut off from the needs and interests of the community around them. “We need to work out more effective mechanisms and principles for the use of land and other resources that reconcile different interests,” he said

Work to ease disparities, Manmohan tells scientists

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