Growth versus equity: A debate that India should've long settled

There is no long-term conflict between the two so long as we reskill and adapt workers to evolving economic dispensations

- MANOJ PANT

About a decade ago, there was a fascinating debate on the internet about the age-old issue of growth versus equity. The inspiration then was a media statement by Professor Amartya Sen that in India we should end our "obsession with growth." Expectedly, the riposte came from the Professor Jagdish Bhagwati group' (for want of a better term), emphasizing the importance of high economic growth. Even today, the political overtones of this debate are obvious as, now that the pandemic is over, it is revisited with some new voices in the arena. Except that now the debate has moved on to the issue of the reliability of numbers. So, should we look at National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data (readings too few and far between) or Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data or the private Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) data? Each offers its own numbers, depending on the coverage and time period. More recently, the debate moved on to judging whether there had been an increase or decrease in inequality using income tax data (Our View in Mint, 16 March, and a response by V. Anantha Nageswaran et al in Mint, 4 April). On the other hand, Arvind Panagariya and Vishal More have argued in another paper, using PLFS data, that poverty must have declined in India after the pandemic.