While I was walking down the streets of Kadma in Jamshedpur, I saw a salesman holding the catoon of 'Aquaguard'. That same moment, an article of Indian Express flashed before my mind.
What the article said was the fact that Growth and Development are two different concepts. Growth is narrower concept and Development is a broad concept. Growth is quantitative and Development is qualitative. The indicator of growth is per capita income whereas indicators for the development are education, health which includes safe drinking water, sanitation etc.
Now, what I want to emphasize is that today, there are lot of funds allocated for these social development indicators but it is disheartening to know the percentage of those effectively utilized. According to a survey in 2004, 78000 rural households did not have access to safe drinking water in India. The number is increasing. If that is so, even if Raguram Rajan's policy of easing out the CAD to contain it at a level of ~ 4 % will fail to achieve the "development". Urban people are very happy that they are drinking 'aquaguard' water. But after the salesman leave their homes after installing aquaquards, they should be suggested & motivationally driven by urban people itself to start some projects of delivering such safe drinking water technologies for rural India. If the profit is concern for them, why can't government start PPP projects with such companies and start flushing some money in this forms of projects rather than spending huge amount of corpus in schemes which ultimately do not reach to the desired people, get looted by bureaucrats in some way or the other. What I want to say is, there are ongoing 12 government schemes in India in the name of Gandhi-Nehurvian family. We should not just let the glory of these names fade away. Our government has done a good job in allocating such huge for providing access to such basic amenities for the people. It's just that we have to push a little further 'smartly'.
