The concept of inclusive growth focuses on equitable growth for all sections of society. This involves ensuring that fruits of growth and development reach the poor and marginalized sections as well. Inclusiveness is a multi-dimensional concept. Inequalities that include, social exclusion, discrimination, restrictions on migration, constraints on human development, lack of access to finance and insurance, corruption – are sources of inequality and limit the prospect for economic advancement among certain segments of the population, thereby perpetuating poverty.

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Challenges to inclusive growth:

• Poverty alleviation is one of the big challenges for India. Eradication of poverty in India is generally only considered to be a long-term goal. Poverty alleviation is expected to make better progress in the next 50 years than in the past, as a trickle-down effect of the growing middle class.
• Increasing stress on education, reservation of seats in government jobs and the increasing empowerment of women and the economically weaker sections of society, are also expected to contribute to the alleviation of poverty
• Government schemes should target eradication of both poverty and unemployment (which in recent decades has sent millions of poor and unskilled people into urban areas in search of livelihoods) attempt to solve the problem, by providing financial assistance for setting up businesses, skill honing, setting up public sector enterprises, reservations in governments, etc.
• Disparity
  • The disparity between -> Rich and Poor
  • The disparity between -> Urban and Rural
  • The disparity between -> Educated and Uneducated
• Demography: We have 550 million young people below 25 age, we have the ready workforce for the world, everything we do today must focus on this population, we need to provide them nutrition food, skills, and job opportunities to grow.
• Improving the delivery of core public services: The incomes rise, citizens are demanding better delivery of core public services such as water and power supply, education, policing, sanitation, roads and public health. As physical access to services improves, issues of quality have become more central.
• Maintaining rapid growth while making growth more inclusive: The growing disparities between urban and rural areas, prosperous and lagging states, skilled and low-skilled workers, the primary medium term policy challenge for India is not to raise growth from 8 to 10 percent but to sustain rapid growth while spreading its benefits more widely.
• Developmental challenges:
• Expansion: Expansion is happening every day in developing countries like India, but perhaps not happening in the pace we would like. We have roads but we need more roads likewise we need to expand energy, infrastructure, facilities, etc.
• Excellence: Leaving of our top 5 or 10% quality of our education, our services, our governance, is really not that so great, we must collectively work towards improving quality in everywhere.
• Equity: We need to make sure that the poorest to the poorer can indeed get the best education, health, jobs, and other facilities.
• Social development is possible through achieving Women Empowerment and eradicating the regional disparities. Though the Government is giving the women empowerment by giving special reservations, the women’s advancement in India is still not matched the expectations for inclusive growth.

Measures needed:

• Lowering the incidence of poverty and inequality requires a comprehensive strategy.
• Important steps need to be taken like framing policies to improve health, nutrition and education.
• Labour market reforms and reforms of direct taxation will have redistributive effects on the system.
• Schemes like National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), provide 100 days or more of employment at a wage determined by government are already in progress but there is a need to check the cost effectiveness of these schemes
• Reforms to plug the leakages in the PDS, introduction of GPS tracking, activating vigilance committees, must be undertaken across the country.
• Research needs to be carried out by government agencies to document the ‘best practices’ in the implementation of government schemes.
• Minorities and other excluded groups, including the poor in upper castes, also need special programmes to bring them into the mainstream.

Conclusion:

To achieve inclusiveness, all these dimensions need to be looked into. Institutional and attitudinal changes should be brought about though this will take time. Awareness about inclusiveness and empowerment is required to be created. Reducing poverty is to be taken as key element in our inclusive growth strategy and there has been some progress in that regard.