Debate

A country’s socio-economic development can be defined in terms of its factors like its economy,
healthcare, education of its citizens but they alone cannot give a ground reality of the lifestyle of the
citizen of that country. A holistic view, therefore is needed, which requires aggregating all the factors
and predicting trends based on these factors to decide whether a country is heading in the right
direction or not. I would therefore like to prove why the proposition believes that India’s past and
current development model does not fully realise the potential of its billion citizens.

Over the 70 years of its history, India has been many things, but efficient is not one of them. India is
a mixed economy, meaning that it is made up of capitalist elements like free markets, private
property as well as socialist elements like wealth redistribution programs, common land ownership.
This system can be very effective in cases like the Scandinavian countries like Norway, Sweden but
its success could not be replicated in India. Some of the reasons in its failure were but not limited to

1.) Unequal wealth distribution which resulted in the rich few holding the vast amounts of
resources in the new nation. Currently the top 10% hold 73% of the nations wealth
2.) India being a country dependant on imports severely hampered the domestic industries and
thus couldn’t compete on the global stage
3.) Another major point was that evils like growth of monopolistic practices, large
inequalities, poverty are still prevalent to a very high extent . The indulgent
bureaucracy and red tape also did not do the nation any favours
In terms of public infrastructure and facilities, India is severely lacking in a variety of fields. Many of these
include sectors like healthcare which does not have the requisite manpower for a population as big as India’s,
education where public schools do not give enough funding for basic functioning and public universities funds
are usually reserved for a select few like the IITs. It is extremely worrisome that the best universities in India
cannot compete at all with the global standard, further exacerbated by the rat race for the select few seats in
these colleges. It is a worrying trend when a majority of the youth of the nation are unemployable due to
outdated curriculum where rote learning is encouraged and lack of extra-curricular activities participation
leading to poor social skills. Teachers in India are treated with utmost respect but the country repeatedly falls
in the bottom 10 when it actually comes to pay them a liveable wage, especially in the public sector.

Furthermore, some of the erratic policy making of past and present governments are only taken to attract vote
banks just before elections. Indira Gandhi’s poverty alleviation was quick to draw attention from various social
groups but in the end only helped the middle class interests. Similar policies by the Modi government to tackle
corruption namely demonetisation failed to actually provide any results. Thus one can see a pattern of
showmanship by politicians to secure power but rarely are these ideas fully realised.

I would like to state again that the proposition is not stating that India has not seen any progress since
Independence, but rather that the vested powers present at the top have lead to a system which is aloof, lax
and focuses more on dividing the country on religious, communal and linguistic lines than to actual benefit the
population. One only needs to see the meteoric rise of East Asia which started in a similar position like India
but only needed good governance, investment in healthcare, education, infrastructure and powerful industries
which lead to its current prosperity. I would like to conclude the propositions case by quoting Thomas
Jefferson, one of Americas founding fathers “No government should be without critics. If its intentions are
good then it has nothing to fear from criticism.”