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`Growth has failed to reduce poverty`
New Delhi, Aug 25: Mumbai University Vice-Chancellor B L Mungekar has criticised Indian economists for devoting much more energy to quantifying poverty rather than finding solutions to the problem, saying that economic growth ought to improve the conditions of the poor rather than increase the privileges of the affluent sections of society.
New Delhi, Aug 25: Mumbai University Vice-Chancellor B L Mungekar has criticised Indian economists for devoting much more energy to quantifying poverty rather than finding solutions to the problem, saying that economic growth ought to improve the conditions of the poor rather than increase the privileges of the affluent sections of society.
''For this to happen, the poverty removal policy must be an integral part of the development policy and not its by-product, which unfortunately has been the case over the years,'' Prof Mungekar said while delivering the fifth D S Borker Memorial Leacture here last evening. Dr Mugekar, a well known economist, was speaking on ''My Vision of India :2047.''
''According to me a more important and fundamental question is 'why poverty' or than 'how much poverty 'or how to measure poverty,'' Prof Mungekar said.
The political economy of poverty would make it amply clear that the most unequal distribution of means of production is the basic cause of wide scale poverty in the country. An immediate solution is to carry out the unfinished agenda of various land reforms, particularly implementation of the ceiling legislation.
''Even today, land being the primary asset of production in agriculture and also a major determinant to access to various other productive and income generating assets, any talk of meaningfully reducing poverty in the rural areas without land reforms would be self-defeating, he said. Bureau Report
''According to me a more important and fundamental question is 'why poverty' or than 'how much poverty 'or how to measure poverty,'' Prof Mungekar said.
The political economy of poverty would make it amply clear that the most unequal distribution of means of production is the basic cause of wide scale poverty in the country. An immediate solution is to carry out the unfinished agenda of various land reforms, particularly implementation of the ceiling legislation.
''Even today, land being the primary asset of production in agriculture and also a major determinant to access to various other productive and income generating assets, any talk of meaningfully reducing poverty in the rural areas without land reforms would be self-defeating, he said. Bureau Report