India’s labour question is also a social question: inequalizing growth and increasing social equality under neoliberal economic regimes

K. P. Kannan ()
Additional contact information
K. P. Kannan: Centre for Development Studies

Journal of Social and Economic Development, 2017, vol. 19, issue 2, No 2, 263-282

Abstract: Abstract The Indian growth story since its adoption of neoliberal economic reforms in 1991 is indeed a celebrated one especially by the increasingly powerful corporate capitalist lobby and their supporters within India as well as abroad. In fact the high growth performance started from the mid-eighties with limited internal economic reforms has now contributed to a long-term growth rate of 6% per annum for the last three decades. Although this record is excelled by China by a considerable margin over a longer period that in no way diminishes its contemporary significance. What is conspicuous by its absence is any reference to the increasing economic inequality embedded in a pre-existing social inequality and the consequent impact on the vast majority of the people referred to as aam aadmi, or common people, in India. One of the main justifications propounded, and pounded relentlessly, by the official statements and pronouncements as well as by large sections of the powerful media is that the process of high growth and its maintenance will ‘trickle down’ and reduce poverty because it will lift ‘all boats’. Of course, growth did trickle down for some in the literal sense of lifting them out of an officially defined poverty line that has increasingly been challenged while leaving a large majority where they were. Such a process has been called ‘inclusive growth’ because it sought to give them some marginal benefits without any reference to the level or the rate of increase in economic benefits accruing to the non-poor and richer sections.

Keywords: Social inequality; Neoliberal economic reform; Poverty and vulnerability; Informal employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40847-017-0045-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jsecdv:v:19:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s40847-017-0045-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40847

DOI: 10.1007/s40847-017-0045-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Social and Economic Development is currently edited by M.G. Chandrakanth, D. Rajasekhar, Anand Inbanathan and S. Madheswaran

More articles in Journal of Social and Economic Development from Springer, Institute for Social and Economic Change
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().