EDUCATION ON BASICS OF WATER, EDUCATION AND HEALTH IN INDIA

  • Failure to expedite a water pricing policy in the face of a plummeting water table risks droughts, unrest in a decade’s time, says Boston Consulting Group’s India chief; urges doubling spending on education, health to tap the demographic dividend
  • India needs to urgently fix the ‘fundamental gaps’ in areas like water, health, education, besides addressing the ‘inconsistent’ policies of financial sector regulators and refrain from ‘drum beating’ in its pursuit of becoming a larger global economy, Boston Consulting Group’s India chief Janmejaya Sinha. suggested on Thursday.
  • “We have foundational and fundamental gaps which stay unfixed… China started its growth by first fixing water,” observed Mr. Sinha, speaking at the the CII Global Economic Policy Summit. “We, far away from fixing water, mess up water… our water pricing is flawed. Are we talking with urgency about water here?” he wondered.
  • India’s water table, he noted, had plummeted to a dangerous level, which could trigger droughts in about a decade’s time that could spark ‘major unrest’.

‘Internal food security’

  • “If we don’t fix water… we can’t double agricultural productivity, which we need for internal food security and to release the labour force,” he noted.
  • Sinha added that health and education spends also needed to double to prevent the demographic dividend from becoming a ‘disaster’. “We have an average age of 27 but that doesn’t help if there is complete lack of productivity,” he said.
  • Emphasising the need for innovation, Baba Kalyani of Bharat Forge said: “We are still a factor-driven economy. Unless… we become an innovation-driven economy… we are not going to see the kind of per capita income that will drive the economy to the goals that we have set”.

SOURCE: THE HINDU, THE ECONOMIC TIMES, PIB

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