Friday, March 14, 2008

WHAT SORTS OF DEVELOPMENT

Saksar Sawasth Aur secular Haryana
What short of development?
Given that India is a very poor country with enormous diversity in terms of religion, language, and ethnicity, the gradual maturing of Indian democracy has been remarkable achievement, almost unparalleled in political history. But this remarkable achievement has also been fatally flawed by our unforgivable failure to deal in an effective manner with mass poverty and illiteracy and various forms of religious, social and gender discrimination and irreparable environmental degradation. Any vision of development is not worth accepting unless it shows how to eliminate rapidly mass poverty and illiteracy, and overcome simultaneously various social barriers arising from caste, religion and gender prejudices .Two experiences are with us: One is market oriented high growth in a globalised world and the other is bureaucratic state intervention with centralized planning. But these models have not stood the test of time. How we can have sustainable development with dignity and without threatening the environment and the planet earth itself.
R.S.Dahiya

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