Pavan K.Varma | Prophets of doom'? We all ignored India's poor

Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta’s comments in the Supreme Court have, predictably, stirred a storm. Under the shadow of the glitzy malls, the upward mobility of middle class Indians, and stories of India’s emergence as a global economic power, there was the harsh truth of millions of the poor hovering precariously just above levels of absolute poverty, living in unlivable slums, part of an unmapped unorganised sector, bereft of a social safety security net, and eking out a living from one meal to another. It did not require a lockdown to reveal that outside the sylvan surroundings of Lutyen’s Delhi, where economic reforms were hailed and government achievements were pompously touted, 49 per cent of the capital of the Republic was officially a slum, an area defined by the Census as not worthy of human habitation. In all these decades, what has been done on a systemic basis to boost agricultural productivity, and raise the agricultural sector’s growth rate to beyond the one or two per cent per annum? What agriculture needed was quantum investments in irrigation, better agricultural extension services, new and better seeds and fertilisers, increased warehouse and cold storage facilities, better road connectivity, more effective R&D inputs, and above all structural reform, like the ones initiated now, of changes to the Essential Commodities Act and the Agriculture Producers Market Committee Act.