Ways To Achieve Equality And Social Justice – Tenth Five Year Plan
Although growth has strong direct poverty-reducing effects, the frictions and rigidities in the Indian economy can make these processes less effective, and the Tenth Plan must therefore be formulated in a manner that explicitly addresses the need to ensure equity and social justice. There are several ways in which this can be achieved. First agricultural development must be viewed as a core element of the Plan as growth in this sector is likely to lead to the widest spread of benefits especially to the rural poor.
The first generation of reforms concentrated on reforms in the industrial economy and reforms in the agricultural sector was neglected. This must change in the Tenth Plan. Second, the growth strategy of the Tenth Plan must ensure the rapid growth of those sectors that are most likely to create high-quality employment opportunities and deal with the policy constraints which discourage the growth of employment.
Particular attention must be paid to the policy environment influencing a wide range of service sectors which have large employment as construction, tourism, transport, SSI and modern retaining, It enabled services and a range of other new services which need to be promoted through supportive policies.
Third, there will be a continuing need to supplement the impact of growth with special programmes aimed at special target groups that may not benefit sufficiently from the normal growth process. Such programmes have long been part of our development strategy and they will have to continue in the Tenth Plan.
Employment Generation and Poverty Reduction
The tenth Plan has indicated that the current backlog of unemployment is around 35 million persons, i.e., 9 per cent of the labour force. The Prime Ministers vision of creating 100 million employment opportunities over the next 10 years cannot be realised, if we depend merely on the growth process pushing it to an 8 per cent level. The Special Group on Targeting 10 million employment opportunities. per year has indicated that over the Tenth Plan, if 8 per cent growth is achieved, an additional 30 million employment opportunities will be created.
For this purpose, special employment generation programmes will have to be focused on high employment generating sectors so that an additional 20 million jobs are created over the Tenth Plan period. If this combined target is achieved, the unemployment rate is likely to decline significantly to 5 per cent by the end of the Tenth Plan.
Similarly, the targeted reduction in the poverty rate of 5 per cent during the Tenth plan and another 10 percentage points by the Eleventh Plan, will still leave more than 11 per cent of the population, or about 130 million people, below the poverty line in 2012.
Sectoral Allocation of the Tenth Plan
Sectoral allocations of the Ninth and Tenth Plan are given in the following table. The data indicate that as against the total allocation of/R. 8,41,041 crores in the Ninth Plan (At 2001-02 prices ), the Tenth Plan allocates Rs. 15,25,639 crores-an. increase by 62 per cent which is substantial. Although the Tenth Plan explaining the relatively low GDP growth of the Ninth Plan, held agriculture responsible since it showed a miserably low growth of 2.1 per cent on the average, still the Tenth Plan allocation of agriculture (including irrigation was stepped up by only 51 per cent.
The only underlines the relatively low priority given to agriculture. The sector which has been given the maximum boost is energy with its allocation jacked up from Rs. 2,19,243 crores during the Ninth Plan to Rs. 4,03,927 crores during the Tenth Plan – a big increase is an allocation for social services from Rs. 1,94,529 crores to Rs. 3,47,391 crores – a jump of about 79 per cent.
Since in communication, big private sector corporates are undertaking huge investments, public sector outlay in communications has been raised by merely 6.6 per cent. Industry and minerals have got a boost by only 32 per cent. This is also because the reform process has mainly boosted the private sector in industry and there is a withdrawal by the public sector from this area. However, there was the need to step up allocation to small scale industries, but separate figures are not given in this regard.
Here are some notes for Sectoral Allocations Of Public Sector Resources For the Ninth And Tenth Plan.