It is high time to turn back to agriculture, millions of farmers, land use and productivity, and uplift of the downtrodden, especially millions of Dalits and tribes, and conservation of environment to which we remain committed but have given lower priority in the framework of our economic and social development with depressing results. Secondly, whatever good is sought to be done does not reach the targeted sections, especially the poor in rural areas, the bane of our developmental history.

Government's chronic inability to deliver what it promises for a country already seething with discontent underscores the failures of governance. Speaking in the context of the Maoist challenge to established authority, the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh only recently spoke candidly of how the administration has been viewed by the tribal India “in the form of a rapacious forest guard, a brutal policeman, a greedy patwari“.

Underlining the breach between promise and performance, the Prime Minister added that it was time that Government provided “a better delivery of services, one which is sensitive and caring to the needs and concerns of the tribal population for effective livelihood strategies on a sustainable basis”. This is characteristic of our approach to a large extent to the rural and semi-urban India as a whole, where millions of economically deprived look vainly for the intended benefits of social development to touch their lives.

There has, therefore, to be a dramatic shift of emphasis in the approach to the Twelfth Plan, now being formulated by the Planning Commission, in the light of the far from satisfactory accomplishment of the goals set in the 11th plan, not just in terms of rate of growth, which are relatable to some extent on external factors, but in the social objectives with most of the physical targets continuing to be under-achieved. Plans must get reflected in credible outcomes, essential also for political survival for any ruling dispensation.

Election to election, the major political alignments promise everything to the poor, devising new slogans and tactics with ingenuity, and fall a prey to wayside pulls and pressures and uncertainties, partly nature-induced like deficient or failed monsoons and mainly focus on industrialization as the principal tool for ending poverty and unemployment in the country. Complacency has been the hall mark of successive governments, particularly UPA-II, claiming “achievements”, divorced from ground realities.

The National Development Council is being asked to rubber-stamp the Planning Commission's mid-term appraisal for the 11th plan, tightly hidden so far from public scrutiny, and what is so well known are not only the agricultural setback, for which monsoon or the lack of it, can be conveniently blamed, but also the glaring failures in physical infrastructure, - be it power, roads, ports and railways. We may clutch at some hopeful straws for improved performance for the future but the country pays enormously for under-fulfilment of targets, cost over-runs and corrosive corruption.

The world financial and economic crisis and the Great Depression in the developed economies, leading to a global downturn, would no doubt be held as the major factor for the 11th plan not achieving its 9 per cent growth target. The Commission now hopes we may end up with not less than 8.1 per cent average growth during the current plan period (2007-12), on the assumption growth would rise to 8.5 per cent, at the minimum, in 2010/11 and 9 per cent in the terminal year of the plan. Quick recovery has been possible no doubt because of the resilience of the Indian economy built up over the years through both some restrictive policies and a well-guarded financial sector from undue exposure to the ill winds from abroad.

India has not lagged behind in embracing globalisation in all its forms and manifestations, though with some qualifications, with a conviction that it would transform the country from a backward rural economy to a modern global power to reckon with, no matter the magnitude of the bottled up social discontent and the scale of under-development outside the cities. If India cannot feed its people, it is essentially because we are not producing to the extent required, so much so that we have to think, after 63 years of independence, of a Food Security for the people, which itself poses an awesome challenge unless agriculture becomes prosperous..

For the world outside, India is a strong, rising regional power and at its current pace of growth (GDP) could become one among the first three to four largest economies in the next two decades. This has added to our zest as well as smugness as if the whole country is on a triumphant march. However, global conditions have dramatically changed the discourse as free market capitalism and globalization took its severest beating in the recent global economic catastrophe, akin to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

As major recession-hit economies, deep in deficits and debt, will take years to put their houses in order, a new opportunity has opened up for what are called dynamic emerging economies like China, India or Brazil, to turn inwards, strengthen domestic sources of growth to generate domestic demand and consumption, with shrinking export markets in the developed world. This would give them greater leverage in the world economy.

The success of the new global strategy of strong, sustained and rebalanced growth, aimed at reducing the sharp external imbalances of countries - the surpluses and deficits - would no doubt depend on how far each country progresses with its savings-investment profiles to bring about the desired adjustment internally and a flexible use of instruments like exchange rates to seize opportunities of trade expansion. China is relatively well advanced to shift toward greater domestic consumption and reduce reliance on exports as its main engine of growth which would still be at a faster pace.

For India, with rates of domestic savings and investment still high by developing country standards, we have to re-work our own strategy, drawing from our rich experience of where we succeed and where we have failed, and evolve policies socially more responsive, given our levels of backwardness with regard to several indicators of human development, and economically more job-creating, maximizing investment opportunities. It is no longer valid to assume that governance is best served by making pro-poor laws and letting them indifferently executed. Nor should Government ignore the perils of soaring inflation with food prices at levels not seen since independence, as it has mutely watched over the last 18 months, which is being left to the mercies of monsoons and “base effect”. (IPA Service)