India’s Economic Inequality Crisis: How Elite Development Models Failed the Nation

Published : Nov 09, 2024 19:05 IST - 30 MINS READ On June 4, 2005, the venerated business house of the Tatas signed an agreement to set up a steel plant in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. “The major beneficiaries of the government’s largesse”, the Press Trust of India reported at the time, were “big corporate entities like Reliance Industries, Essar Steel and Adani Power”. Moreover, in the context of Gujarat’s high GDP growth, the State’s human development performance, including on such measures as life expectancy and female literacy, was, she said, “not just middling but downright bad”. Financial Times put it more directly in the run-up to the 2014 election: “Part of Mr Modi’s attraction is that, by sheer force of will, he may be able to override some of the checks and balances of Indian democracy and introduce some of the clear-headedness of growth-driven China.” “Indian governments have continued to ignore Supreme Court orders, especially those that seek to break the nexus between political rulers and businesses.” Indian and international elites do not seem to recognise the breathtaking irony of their glorifying Indian democracy while bristling at its institutional checks and compulsions for accommodating multiple interests. In sum, scarce national and State taxes spent on visible infrastructure and handouts to win political accolades leave little room for “invisible” goods and services of fundamental importance to people’s lives and upward mobility.