May 11 is celebrated in India as National Technology Day, for on this day in 1998, India exploded nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan.
Despite all the fanfare and hoopla, my opinion is that National Technology Day is a stunt and a joke. Let me explain why.
Today, India is facing massive problems. Despite the tall claim of Prime Minister Modi that his government will create 10 million new jobs a year, the truth, as disclosed in the National Sample Survey (which is a Government of India organisation, and whose report was leaked out) is that unemployment is at a 45-year record high. For each government job advertised, there are often a thousand applicants, with even people holding PhD, MSc and MBA degrees and engineers begging for a peon's job. Demonetisation alone is believed to have destroyed 20 million jobs.
As much as 47 per cent of Indian children are malnourished (as disclosed by Global Hunger Index and other organisations), which is a figure higher than that of the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa like Somalia (which has 35 per cent malnutrition). This also indicates that well over 50 per cent of our women are malnourished, because a woman will starve herself than let her children starve. Fifty per cent of Indian women are anaemic.
Farmers suicides have crossed the 3 lakh mark and are continuing unabated due to lack of remunerative prices as recommended by the Swaminathan Committee Report.
Proper healthcare and good education are almost non-existent for the poor Indians, who constitute 75 per cent of our population.
The solution to these problems is rapid industrialisation, for that alone can create millions of jobs and the wealth required for the welfare of our people. But how to achieve this? After independence, there was a limited degree of industrialisation, but now that has stalled and our economy is in stagnation or recession (despite the tall claims of our leaders).
The first requirement for rapid industrialisation is having a modern-minded political leadership, which is determined to rapidly industrialise the country. Japan was a poor feudal country under the Shoguns, but after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the political leaders who came to power were modern-minded people determined to rapidly industrialise the country. The result was that in 15-20 years, Japan was transformed into an industrial country, like those in Europe or North America.
So, it takes a country just 15-20 years to become a highly industrialised economy. Once, we have such modern-minded political leaders, it will take us just 15-20 years to transform India into a highly industrialised country.
Unfortunately, under our parliamentary system of government, most of our politics is based on caste and communal vote banks. Casteism and communalism are feudal forces, which have to be destroyed if India is to progress, but parliamentary democracy further entrenches these forces. So it is obvious India cannot progress under parliamentary democracy, and we have to look for a revolutionary alternative.
Most of our present political leaders have no genuine love for the country, but are only interested in power and pelf. They only know how to polarise society on caste and communal lines to get votes, but have no idea how to rapidly industrialise India nor have any inclination to do so. All they are interested in is winning the next elections and amassing fortunes.
Apart from that, there is a fundamental problem regarding industrialisation of India. We have no dearth of technical talent. We have thousands of bright engineers, scientists and technicians (many of our IT engineers are manning Silicon Valley, and there are numerous professors of science, engineering and mathematics in western universities). We also have immense natural resources (India is not a small country like England or Japan, but is a subcontinent).
However, the problem is not of raising industrial production (that can easily be done as we have a huge pool of technical talent and huge natural resources), but of sales. Our people are mostly poor with little purchasing power. After all, the goods manufactured have to be sold. How can they be be sold when our people can hardly buy food, let alone afford industrial goods?
So the solution for achieving rapid industrialisation is to raise the purchasing power of the masses, so that the increased production can be sold. How is that to be done?
In the Soviet Union, after the policy of rapid industrialisation came with the first five-year plan in 1928, the methodology adopted was broadly this: the prices of commodities were fixed by the government, and every two years or so, they were reduced by 5 to 10 per cent (sometimes wages were also raised by 5-10 per cent). In this way, by steadily reducing prices of commodities (and sometimes raising wages), the purchasing power of the masses was raised by state action. With the same nominal wage, one could now buy more goods, as they had become cheaper, and this meant rise in the real wage (which is relative to the prices).
Simultaneously, industrial production was raised, and now the goods produced could be absorbed in the domestic market, since now, the people had the purchasing power (reliance on foreign markets is precarious as it may be captured by some other country, or there may be a recession in the foreign country where one sells his goods. For stability, one has to basically rely on one's domestic market).
I am not saying that we must follow the methodology of the Soviet Union. But we must find out a way of raising the purchasing power of our masses; otherwise, we can never become a first-rate industrialised country like those in North America or Europe, and will remain poor with massive unemployment, malnourishment, lack of healthcare and other socio-economic problems, and the National Technology Day will just remain a gimmick.
This can obviously not be done within the present political system but will require a revolution.
Justice Markandey Katju retired from the Supreme Court in 2011
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK
