In India government programs and strategies since independence have not seriously addressed the exclusion problem.

Despite tremendous growth of the Indian economy, failure on distributive front has aggravated the progressive journey towards collective well-being. Inclusive growth has become the buzzword in policy-spheres with recent phenomenon of rapid growth with characteristic patterns of exclusion. In the country government programs and strategies since independence have not seriously addressed the exclusion problem. Exclusion continued in terms of low agriculture growth, low quality employment growth, low human development, rural-urban divides, gender and social inequalities, and regional disparities etc. The sectoral, social and spatial inequalities have raised questions about welfare approaches of Government planning, and emphasized the role of the private sector in addressing development issues in the country. Employment generation, social and developmental infrastructure, health-care and rural diversification are some of the major concerns. Due to faulty approaches and often politically motivated policies, growth has generated inequalities.

“The achievement of high growth must ultimately be judged in terms of the impact of that economic growth on the lives and freedoms of the people.”- Amartya Sen.

Since independence and more specially from July 1991, Indian economy has witnessed several reforms encompassing all the major sectors of the economy. The main objective of these reforms was to put the Indian economy out of the low level equilibrium trap. These reforms have marked a steady break from the previous policy regime. Due to these policies, India has raced to the top of world chart in terms of GDP growth. Since the last decade or so, GDP and Investment growth have recorded historical increase in India. It is projected that the GDP of India will grow at a double digit rate in the next few years. This high Growth, however, continues to bypass a large section of people. A large majority of Indians live in the villages and they have been excluded from India’s growth story. Rural India is facing endemic problems – land holdings are shrinking, slow growth in agricultural production and limited social and economic infrastructure. Women, Children, backward castes & classes and other minorities often are excluded from the growth story. The rise of grass root militant movements which plague nearly one-tenth of India is a direct result of this economic exclusion and the unfulfilled aspirations of the bottom billion. Today, economic power rests with a precious few. According to Credit Suisse, the top 1% of the population own 15.9% of India’s wealth, the top 5% own 38.3% and the top 10% have 52.9% of Indian’s wealth. What this really means is that 90% of Indian, the urban and rural poor has a very small stake in the pie. The policy designers generally claim that with the passage of time the fruit of higher GDP economic growth will ‘trickles down’ to lower levels. But in India, this ‘trickle down’ has not worked yet. The approach of growth with equity or the ‘Inclusive Growth Strategy’ of government has proven to be a failure in key/urgent spheres. Here, we can examine some crucial parameters of Indian economy and thereby can try to bring out the real picture of its performance.

As per economic survey of 2011-12 the share of agriculture in GDP is at all-time low (13.9 per cent during this year) but it is still the most important sector in terms of employment share. On the other hand, the manufacturing and services activities which are contributing more than 85 per cent to GDP and getting a lion’s share of total capital formation are employing less than half of the total workforce. The higher growth and capital formation in the above two sectors have failed to transfer the workforce from low productive activities to high productive activities. The 11th five year plan aimed at generating 58 million work opportunities. But the NSSO survey has reported an increase in work opportunities to the tune of only 18 million between 2004-05 to 2009-10. The growth rate of employment in the organized sector is only 1.9 per cent in 2010. The recent data shows that only 15.6 per cent of India’s workforce has regular jobs whereas remaining 84.4 per cent are either self-employed or working on casual basis. It obviously means that 85 per cent of India’s workforce is working under insecure and irregular conditions. So the theoretical claim regarding the relationship between GDP growths and increasing employment opportunities is nothing else but a myth.

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Social sector spending in India has recorded secular decline after the introduction of neo-liberal policies, no matter how essential these expenditures are. Wide range of social sector activities accounted only a small per cent of the total budgetary expenditure during last many decades. According to Human Development Report of 2015, India ranks 131 out of 187 countries in terms of human development. India’s public expenditure on health ranks among the lowest in world. Under the neo-liberal agenda it is such planned disinvestment policy of the government that is facilitating the corporate/commercial bodies to invest in health services and earn enormous profits, exploiting the sickness of common people. At present, three quarter of the advanced medical technology and 68 per cent of hospitals are in private sector. This corporate sector led health network is exploiting the bottom strata of society and deepening the health inequality in India

The case is more or less the same in education. In primary education, we are well behind the other nations which have comparable level of economic growth and per capita income. During 2011, the mean year of schooling in India was 4.4 and female literacy rate was lower than the overall average. After the introduction of neo-liberal policies, the private sector investment in education has increased sharply and it has become one of the major profits earning sectors. These corporate sector led universities and institutions are more concerned about the quantitative addition in their strength and higher profits rather than quality of education.

The gap between the haves and have not’s is seriously wide in India and it has more widened after the introduction of new economic policy. Planning commission has adjusted the poverty line for 2009-10 prices, which stood at Rs. 29 per day per capita expenditure in urban areas and Rs. 22 per day per capita in rural areas. On the basis of this, the commission claimed that there was impressive rate of decline in poverty from 37.2 per cent in 2004-05 to 29.8 per cent in 2009-10.The orthodox economists are of the view that the higher GDP growth (8.5 per cent) from 2004-05 to 2009-10 has reduced poverty at a record rate of 1.5 per cent point per year.

But in the reality, according to the calorie estimates of poverty, the proportion of households which are unable to consume 2100 calories in urban areas and 2200 calories in rural areas (earlier it was 2400) are considered to be poor. On the basis of this criterion Utsa Patnaik calculated that the proportion of urban population living below this nutrition level has increased from 57 per cent in 1993-94 to 73 per cent in 2009-10. In case of rural areas, the proportion of population below minimum nutrition norms has increased from 59 per cent in 1993-94 to 76 per cent in 2009-10. It is evident that the extent of poverty in India has increased.

SOME REASONS BEHIND THE ISSUE:

Firstly, growth has been jobless, and the employment growth has declined for the same level of economic growth. Despite of remarkable growth which has made India the world's fourth biggest economy, "employment in different sectors has not been rising. This jobless growth in recent years has been accompanied by growth in casualization".

Secondly, growth has been uneven across sectors and locations. For instance, agriculture has been lagging behind and some regions have advanced faster than others. Policies are also relatively ignored the agriculture sector.

Deliberate actions should be taken for lessening vertical inequalities (individual inequalities) and horizontal inequalities (group inequalities).  There is need to create large-scale job otherwise growth becomes, lower down. Growth biased in favor of lower income groups would ensure stability since their consumption patterns are likely to be more stable. Institutions, regulation and economic governance need to acclimate to maintain the economic transformation required for India to tackle its social and economic challenges. Finally, rights of women, children, minority communities and the other marginalized sections of society must be constantly watched and protected if we wish to reach our goal of a truly developed society.