The NDTV dialogues: The growing divide between Bharat and India

New Delhi: On NDTV dialogues, we debate the growing divide between Bharat and India, how do we bring the two closer, what really defines the commonalities and differences within these separate spaces in our nation. Naina Lal Kidwai, Aruna Roy, Professor Dipankar Gupta speak to NDTV's Sonia Singh.Here is the full transcript of the interview which aired on August 11:

NDTV: Good evening and welcome to the NDTV Dialogues. Every week this show will look at a conversation of ideas, at issues that don't feature in our political or even our media discourses. Tonight on the NDTV Dialogues we look at Bharat versus India. How do we bridge a growing divide? This, as new data revealed by the government, points to the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor India is widening. The rich are getting richer at a much faster rate, the poor are getting a bit richer but the growth rate is very, very different. Also consider this fact, India is home to one third of the worlds' poor. Yet, we also have over fifty people on the Forbes billionaires list with the worth of one ninety four billion dollars. How do we reconcile these contradictions? How do we actually bridge this divide? Joining me on this tonight, three people who don't often sit around the same table and discuss ideas, Naina Lal Kidwai, Aruna Roy and Professor Dipankar Gupta, thank you all very much for coming this evening.

Ms Kidwai, this week, you and a host of industry leaders met with the Prime Minister. You discussed the economy, the state of the Indian Rupee, the current account deficit. Yet often at meetings like these, where really India's biggest business leaders, industry minds are there, the issues that don't come up are issues, which I just referred to in my introduction. How do we bring more people out of poverty? How do we look at creating infrastructure for providing more jobs? Why does the discourse often seem one sided?

Naina Lal Kidwai: Well, I don't know if you would say that its one sided in that at the session, one of the key areas for discussion was jobs, and I would say if the dialogue was around job creation, there is a meeting of minds no matter what. Because at one end, and if you recall the sort of, the four points that the Prime Minister wanted to have the discussion on, one of them was on skills. So there was a fair amount of dialogue on the skills programme and the fact that it is a great agenda, but as you know, the implementation is not easy. And I don't think that its actually picked up the pace it should. So when we are talking of vocational skilling, it's with the view to provide skills, which industry can use as well, and there is a shortage. The sad thing is, in today's environment, there is a shortage of skilled workers and its not just construction workers. It can be crane operators. It can be at various levels of skilling, which industry is not being able to find for the love of money. The interesting thing is they are prepared to pay. There is of course a big wail about the fact that prices have gone up and yes, that is so. But the other end, is for an industry that is prepared to pay there is a shortage. So what we need to look at is this so-called demographic dividend, which for India, at the end of the day, should be one where we can provide the jobs and indeed, people who are skilled to do those jobs. And if the dialogue will lift it to that and I am really glad that the economic survey this year, for the first time, set this out. It was a whole chapter on the area of jobs and employment. I think we will see that meeting of minds

NDTV: I just want to bring in Aruna Roy on that point and perhaps pose a question from a slightly different perspective. Some of the arguments against activists as well, is that the list of demands from the government is a long one, but no one really looks at the point of where the money for this will come from. That perhaps we should be looking at more of a partnership between different sectors of society; that perhaps industry would be one area where you can look at job creation. Now, there has been a lot of criticism of the government's rural jobs programme. Naina Lal Kidwai has talked about looking at, they want workers but they don't have skilled workers. They don't have workers they can hire, because they don't have skills. What's your perspective? Why do you think it's a government's job to be giving jobs?

Aruna Roy: I am going to talk from my own paradigm and I am not going to get caught in Naina's. But I will do respond to some of the things she said. And this is the internal predicament of Bharat. The paradigm is defined by India and we have to discuss within that paradigm because we can't go beyond that paradigm to state what we see as the truth. So though I respect what Naina has said, but I am going to speak from the perspective that I have of the life I have led for the last forty years with people. The first predicament is, that the idea of Bharat is just an idea. Nobody really understands the socio-political and economic environment of how things operate. Some things may be fantastic on paper but when you put it on ground there are a million problems. So I think the first thing to understand is that the operational management of India and Bharat sometimes cannot be the same. So a Collector and a Deputy Secretary to the Government of India functionS very differently. So if you look at the functionalities of government and of functioning, even of industry within a rural area, I think there are parameters in which the people would see it very differently. I would pose the question quite differently. I would say that when I went to rural Rajasthan, its true of most of India, now, there was three, four, five percent people who had gone to become graduates. Today you have in the village a phenomenal number of young people who have got some kind of professional degree. They may be fitters, they may be computer operators; they may have got degrees to teach. They are getting into the professional line and 90% of them are jobless. So why are we training anybody, why are we giving them skills? Why aren't we thinking of absorbing the unemployed? In fact, I fear if unemployment is an issue at the rate at which it is in rural India today, you are going to have to face serious social problems. So I would positive it the other way. Lets look at what we have as human resource. Lets look at the skills we have today and then lets ask ourselves the question, why are we not using them? This is about the younger generation, which is now going to school, going to university. But there is the elderly who are not going to get skilled now. There's longevity, we are living beyond 60; we are now living into our late 70's, to our 80's. We have a skill, which you don't recognize, which is that we are very good with implements of construction, of digging, of agriculture, of so many things which you disregard, you don't even see them as a skill. You call us unskilled workers and I challenge anybody to go and dig with a gainty and a phawada which is what they call the implements, the tools. It's not possible. So we have had bunches of trainees come to us in summer during their summer intern programmes and we have just asked them to do the work of the quote unquote unskilled labour for four hours. And to the last person they come back and say its very skilled work. We may or may not, because of demand and supply, you may pay them less, but you cannot call them unskilled. It's extremely skilled work. So where are we talking about human capital in this country? We have tremendous human capital. So we will have to re-look at our economics in an indigenous and Indian manner a la Mahatma Gandhi or people who saw a part of India very well.  And I think, industry, if it looks at this reality and brings its own parameters to it, much can be matched. But wherever industry has gone, it hasn't been able to employ more than a fraction of the unemployed people at your best.

And about CSR I have something to say. The CSR Concept, I am a little uncomfortable with because the company that starts a project with the mismatch between India and Bharat brings in a concept from outside and starts something and its really more the handout programme. India today, rural India is very different from when I went long ago, now we know our rights. There are so many people who come and ask me so many intelligent questions, including young people asking me, 'how do fundamental rights get translated into laws for us? We want to know what law can I use to exercise my right to equality'. So there are questions they are asking. They are no longer in a romantic handout system. So we'll have to deal with the concept of CSR very differently. And I think I would really suggest to Naina, that maybe you should have an interface with people who come from my world and the people who come from your world, on how CSR can be used. And there are numbers of ideas we have and which I think it could be much more fruitfully used.

Then about government, why do we have a government, because in a poor country the government is mandated to support us? It is mandated to have social policy to protect us. It is mandated to implement the assurances of the Constitution and of political parties who are at power. We don't have the same relationship with Indian industry and will never have. And as it is, of course, with the Indian industry we have less quarrel with multinational money coming in. We have internationally, we are not talking about corporate citizenship because we are not citizens anywhere. We don't know what they are doing. With my government, if I am unhappy, after five years I don't vote that party into power. I don't vote that person into power. I can go and collar that human being and demand. How can I demand from anyone else? So for that reason the relationship, the political relationship that the citizen has with his or her government is a primary one, which you cannot question. Therefore, in a poor country an industry will look at profit, the government will have to look at constitutional obligations. So therefore, it will go where it has to go. An industry will not come where it's required to come. Lets take the example of the famous Singur, as you drive out of Kolkata, its on extremely good agricultural land. It could have gone to some part of Bengal where there wasn't that kind of land, maybe it wouldn't have been such a big political battle. But industry wants to occupy three-crop land. So there is a conflict between the industry and the people. And my last point....

NDTV: And of course the State Government also gave them that land....

Aruna Roy: Well, we won't go into that kind of politics now. And that is another issue, so people protested. And people, I am talking about people. Now lets talk about; and then they finally had to withdraw. So let me talk about the last one and that is, wherever there is investment, large-scale investment, like for instance say POSCO, questions that the Oriya people have asked and I have it on film somewhere, basic questions. They said, they told us when we got free, that they were going to give us democracy and we want democracy. They are working for democracy. Now when we work for democracy and we say we don't want anything, they tell us that we are anti-national. What is democracy? So primarily, if we want this democracy to run, each voice will have to have equal weightage. We can't say that one is more important than the other. So therefore, the route to Mr Chidambaram, when he invited me for a social policy meeting, that I don't want to be the other social policy concerns. I want to be with industry. I want to know what money is doing so that we have at least a meaningful dialogue. Because we are all going to say the same thing, you put us into one compartment, you put the industry into another compartment, you put foreign investment into a third compartment, you put expert advice into a fourth compartment and we all speak in different voices till the government does what it wants, where its interest lies. Whereas in fact it should be an interface and I am very glad you have done this. This, of course is a very preliminary and very small interface, but it should be on a much larger scale. So that we see different facets and its only then that Bharat will have space.

Naina Lal Kidwai: I want to jump in here and Aruna you have touched a very important area and that is, the dialogue between the various segments. And you'll be very pleased to hear that at FICCI we've started a council which we are calling The Inclusive Governance Council, which express purpose and we have in fact, very important people like yourselves in there, representing what is civil society and I would like to believe the causes of people, industry of course and policy makers. And the purpose is exactly this, that it's very clear to industry, speaking from industry's perspective, that this confrontational situation today is one. Hence, industry is there, not because I am forcing everyone around the table, but because they firmly believe that understanding the other side and working in a manner, which is inclusive and correct and in the longer term interest of industries, important. You raised a very important example, like POSCO, etc which shows where the standoff hurts everybody. It doesn't benefit India, if we can't progress, if we can't have industry and jobs one the one side. But on the other, it can't be at the cost where people feel disenfranchised and we have to, therefore, have that dialogue. And there is going to have to be a meeting of minds somewhere, because the answer I fear is going to be somewhere in between. Because we will want the jobs, we do want growth, but we want it in a manner which is fair and which works for everybody. And how we find that is going to have to be a dialogue. And I can tell you that the first meeting was, it put me really to the test, I needed someone like Sonia there to try and control everyone, because you can tell the distrust is so deep, it tells you why we cannot have a sensible conversation today which takes us to the next level of solutions. So I am not even dreaming of solutions right now, I am saying lets at least respect each other's viewpoints and begin to understand the issues. Then hopefully we can get to some solution. It won't be an ideal solution but some solutions, but its not going to be an easy one.

Aruna Roy: No, it won't be.

NDTV: Professor Gupta, as an observer also of what's been happening around us, and these so-called identity issues as well, does India see itself as a poor country? Do parts of India see itself as a rich country, where rich Indians are on their way to be super powers? Why is there almost an identity conflict on how we see ourselves? And what do you think is the most realistic way to do this?

Dipankar Gupta: Well, I think in large measure we are in denial. We don't see things of what they are. And again depending upon where you are positioned you obviously have a different view of the future. As those who are doing very well and those who think that their line of work is profitable in whatever form, then they have a view of India, which is very positive. And then there are those that don't see that rosy picture and obviously things don't look so good to them. The India versus Bharat business, which is the lietmotiv of your presentation today, in my mind, its a bit of a bogus comparison. And I say this because I can see India in Bharat and I can see Bharat in India. If you look at the rates of urbanization, if you look at the way in which villages are developing, Bharat of yore is no longer there. In fact, one of the earliest proponents of Bharat in India was the late Mahindra Singh Tikait. And when I put the question to him squarely because I worked on this, I wrote a book in this movement, he fumbled all over the place and he said, you know, from the milk-run to the, and I am not being metaphorical; he said, from the milk-run to the wheat-line to the bread-line, there is no Bharat-India division, you know. I want my kids to be in India as much as I would like them to be in Bharat, that's not going to be. Now, if you look at the way, rural India is functioning, and I have spent a lot of time in rural India as well. It is this. That so much of the work done in rural India is not Bharat linked, the old fashioned way. There is industry. People are working in non-farm occupations. In fact, as you well know about, this is a 1996 figure, has to be updated, that time 45.5% of Rural Net Domestic Product, rural by the way, was non-agricultural. There are vast swathes of the country where rural households don't work on agriculture at all. And if you look at the National Sample Survey figures, they are somewhat misleading because they define farmers very generously. But if you were to look at this a little more strictly, you'll find that rural India, rural India and farming don't go together. What happens instead is that large numbers of people are not really working in non-farm occupations in villages, which explains to a large extent the rural to rural migration. People have not been able to explain that, because I am talking about the male rural to rural migration, not female alone. And they migrate in search of jobs, not in land but other outfits.

What is also interesting is many poor parts of India have a large number of workshops, worksheds, you can get a feel of that if you look at the Census. And you'll find that some of the poorest areas of the country are just sprouting with these workshops, worksheds. And that again is not Bharat in the old fashioned way and they are all linked by the way. One, two, three, four, very transparent steps out there in the open, to the multinational world. I mean here is a small little place in Jharkhand providing things, with some quality improvement, value addition, goes off to Macy's. So you see where the Bharat versus India contradiction is all there. The problem really is within this entire gambit that we are talking about. I would really encourage industry to let loose its animal spirits, as they say. I think that phrase is awful, the person who invented it wanted to control animal spirits. But today in India we thinks it's a great thing to be celebrated. But lets celebrate it. You go where and you do it right. When you do it right, do it the proper way, be transparent. I have audited over a thousand units, and I can tell you there are very few units that play by the rule. So what do they say? They say that we are going to CSR. But I say that before going to CSR, clean up your own backyard. Make sure that your workers are formally registered. Make sure you pay minimum wages. Make sure that people don't extend maximum hours of work. Make sure that you don't have child labour. Make sure that you abide by the law first. And when you do CSR, let the CSR radiate from within, instead of hearing about digging wells, starting schools. Let it radiate from within so that the CSR becomes on ongoing concern of the organisation itself. Now I look at the whole picture in India, and say Bharat versus India, I go to a very spiffy looking factory. You enter this factory, manicured lawns, beautiful building, people looking polished, as if they were born just the other day. They speak English wonderfully, they use words like 'dashboard of opportunity' and 'lets syndicate opinion', you know, business school language. And it sounds very good till you enter the rear portions of the organization and you find informal labour all over the place. And they don't feel bad about it, at all. In Arjun Sengupta's work, the late Arjun Sengupta, what was surprising is from 1995 to 2004-05, the period he was looking at, the contribution of informal labour to the formal sector grew from 37.8% to 46.6% and is growing. And some of the Maruti problems: that we all know is because of this. So animal spirits, yes. But do it by the law, do it by-the-book. The problem is that there was such a vast army of informal labour, 93% practically is informal, you'd be a fool if you were not pressured to reign in your animal spirits, not to tap onto that informal labour. That informal labour is skilled up to a point, the kind of skilling they have. Well, I am talking also of automotive part industries, that kind of skill they have, believe me, you can pick it up in a month. Tailor, job of a tailor in the garment industry used to be a pre-skilled job. You can pick that up in fifteen days, because the darn machine does everything. You turn a knob, it sews buttons; you turn another knob, it makes pleats. It does everything. You go to the automobile manufacturing industry right here in Gurgaon and talk to those people. How many of them are really skilled? They are not skilled at all in that sense of the term. So when you said that you have these people and ITI and people sitting around, I believe it. Because we don't really need skilled labour, we have stopped doing things, which are really important for the economy. Why is it that we are importing such large quantities of very ordinary, low-level engineering products from China? Why do we need electric circuitry from China? Because we have found that informal labour is so good, you can whack it around the clock and make tons of money.  And when the foreigner stops placing orders with us we raise up our hands and say, you know, something's wrong with our economy. But obviously it's there from the very start. I believe that we have to begin in the beginning. You cannot skill labourers at this end without actually paying attention all the way down and all the way up. You cannot talk in terms of Bharat versus India without paying attention to the fact that the migration from village to urban areas is huge and today, the last Census tells us that 18 new million plus cities came up, 72 new class one towns came up, 2770 registered owns came up. For the first time, the migration figures tell us that the growth in urban India has outstripped the growth in rural India. So what we are seeing today is a meshing together of rural and urban, which quite unpredictable. I thought that villages were changing, but I found urban areas changing under my very nose, it came as a shock.

NDTV: No, I think that's a valid point. Actually Bharat versus India is not a physical boundary. You have Bharat versus India almost in the same neighborhood and both worlds in a way seemed blind to each other. Just some of the issues raised, I know labour laws are controversial. There are more industries actually asking for liberalisation, so you can actually hire more. But looking at the broad aspect and issue I raised briefly on why the rich are getting richer, and when the sense of poor, being lifted out of poverty, is not progressing at that same rate. Many have just that look, this proves that the model of growth that we have been going at so far hasn't actually worked. Is there a way of actually looking at turning this on its head? Why don't we just re-examine and go back to the drawing board? Re-define what you mean by growth. Inclusive growth has become almost just a mantra but we need to redefine what we mean by inclusive growth. Inclusive growth doesn't just mean the government has to give handouts and growth handouts here. Corporate or some would say crony capitalism continues in the same way that it did all this time. Or do we look at redefining this issue?

Naina Lal Kidwai: I think Sonia we have to get to the heart of the problem and that is, execution. We are just so bad as a country on executing and....

NDTV: Does the model work of growth that we have followed so far?

Naina Lal Kidwai: You see, if you look at my ideal model. My ideal model would be that India grows at 8-10% for which it needs vibrant industry. It needs infrastructure, because without infrastructure, industry doesn't benefit. It needs infrastructure so that rural roads or whatever is required, which are all gauges of development, sanitation, education, all of that happens. Because if you don't have the money, you don't have enough money to spend where you want it. So the ideal model has to be that you have the money, that people pay their taxes, so that you collect that, and that fund is then available for development at every level. And that benefit in terms of development must go to those that need it most. Now if you have a model, which is where we are sinking to right now, where you are growing at five and a half percent, we cannot have the development programmes we want, or the programmes we have which are so poorly spent that they are not getting to those they should go to. To my mind, the core of the problem is execution and I'll give you an example, I mean wearing the industry hat as well, that there is a very big company called Li and Fung, that does all its trade, it's actually the biggest supplier of products from China into the rest of the world, and fortunately for India they also have a presence here. And the CEO told me, which was a surprise to me, that garment's factory that they have just outside the Chennai, works to a ten percent lower cost than their factory in Northern China. Northern China is dormitory style, you know, production line, huge surprise to me.  I always thought, you know, Chinese labour, low cost. 10% lower and he said efficient labour to the core. So to the point of yes, we have the skill, whether it took them fifteen days or a month, I don't know, to train them, but that's it. However the product that gets exported because of our inefficiencies along the way, ends up being 10% more expensive; just moving from outside Chennai to port and the port turnaround, that is India's failing. We need to put, if we want the benefit of our talented labour, I mean here, lower cost, to be felt as a benefit through the way, we have to be able to play along the rules of the world, because you know, there are borders that are porous. Why should we not be factories to the world? And we can only do it if we can compete at every level. Our interest costs should be competitive, our infrastructure should be right and we should be able to do it according to the game. Absolutely, ensuring no child labour, and by the way, today, foreign companies will, thewill be embarrassed if they are caught having suppliers who are not conforming to the rules. So that brings its own levels of control as well.

NDTV: Dipankar would say, why wouldn't Indian industry have that level of compliance?

Naina Lal Kidwai: No, lets face it. We know this is not an ideal world, so lets, I agree, that it's about execution on the one hand. On the other, believe me we have a lot of superb rules in this country. It's again on execution of the rules. After all you have rules that building cannot be built except to a certain standard, we slip there. You have rules about who you can't employ, slippage is there. So lets have rules, which can be implemented. So the role of government has to be execution at every step. I think that is our biggest failure. It's the way we deliver development programmes, the way we run these programmes, the way we deliver infrastructure or the way we ensure conforming to rules.

NDTV: But for instance why would FICCI and other industry bodies as well as CIII, why would you oppose the Food Security Bill? Given the fact that perhaps you have difference on the method to address it, but the fact of under-nourishment in India...

Naina Lal Kidwai: How can you argue against under-nourishment Sonia, the fact is no one is against; people must get their square meals. The issue is how? So I am no expert on this but the question really is there's some experiments going on, a cash disposal system and I know that comes with criticism that people wouldn't know how to spend it. I don't know. I mean there are so many layers of ideal solutions. I don't know where they lie. My issue would really only be that if the delivery of our best programme is 20-25% of what is to be delivered, if we are to quote from reports we read, and that 75% is getting filtered off along the way, we have got to find that solution. And yes its great that we have developing programmes like the UID, if it can provide a linkage in terms of direct cash disposal, that the money should go where it needs to go.

Aruna Roy: I am going to respond to two things. Since you specifically raised governance and you raised Food Security Bill, food, the whole business of hunger. Let me put it this way, that if you look at what is happening in rural India today and in terms of even delivery of food through ration shops; if you look at well performing states, if you look at Chhattisgarh, if you look at Tamil Nadu, if you look at AP, without any technological intervention they have developed very good models. Informally I have heard from people in Chhattisgarh, the UID will not deliver what their system is delivering, but we are not willing to listen. Not willing to listen. We must push UID. We must push UID. I feel it's irrational. Technology, when it becomes a faith is irrationality. A solution, which becomes the only one, is not right. So all I am saying is that lets look at the ways food has been delivered, and its been improved in many states, and which of the states it's not getting delivered. Lets look at comparative governance issues. Let me tell you that corruption and mismanagement will also take over and subsume the UID as it has.

NDTV: Isn't technology a weapon against that?

Aruna Roy: I don't think so. Technology is a good servant but a terrible master. And if it is a servant then you have to see the morality of the man or woman who is using the technology. It's not going to solve, in the ultimate analysis, your corruption issue. We know for instance, I don't have fingerprints for instance, I know of forty women in my village who have not got their pensions because they have no fingerprints. When they go to the Panchayat, the old story, when the man comes to take their fingerprints or the computer doesn't work or there is no electricity. There is a huge infrastructural need for this technology. The way we are ramming it and pushing it is going to nearly spell disaster. But that is one issue. But what I am saying is, in a limited way, every technology is useful but when you say its universal there is a problem. Because universality of a technology which depends on other issues, it is dangerous.

Anyway, let me go to the food issue. How do you account for 80 million tonnes of food grain from rotting and not getting to your people? It's a common sense question. And I read a beautiful article in one of the English newspapers. It said the death of common sense and I think beyond all that we say, with our ideologies and opposition and all, we all have to have some common sense. So you have 80 million tonnes rotting. You have people who are hungry on the other side. You have a government. Why can't we match the two? Its, and food is not a shortage, and government spending, if you look at the GDP tax ratio, is dismal for social security programmes. We are lower than other South-Asian countries. We are much lower than the big countries and they all compare well with us on poverty figures. So my question is, when a hungry person dies, 20 children die in Bihar, we make such a hullabaloo; and when there is a social policy that wants to reach those people, we have a problem. Lets not look at the policy and critique it, but let's look at the mechanism by which it is sent and let us therefore, improve governance. Who gave us the RTI? It was not me. It was not a set of academics sitting in Delhi. It was a group of people fighting to get their minimum wages, who saw transparency as the root of all evils, and that it would serve their governance issues, their issues of corruption, arbitrary use of power it would lay open and there would be a power shift in their relationship between themselves and the panchayat.

The third one, and that, is about the entire lack of trust that Naina raised, about the industry and others. What do we see? We see, as we drive along, a huge SEZ, which has taken thousands of acres of land for developing and promoting foreign exchange for this country and improving us. And we see a majority of it converted into real estate. We see flats being sold, and we see the people, who have been pushed out, living in, they have gone through their money, whatever money they have got, in abject poverty. The security guards, you can't enter and you are creating a nucleus of India, of whatever, the wealthy, in the middle of poverty and want. This is what we see. So when something like that happens, I think a lot of explanation has to also follow. Why was the SEZ Act not discussed in Parliament for more than two days? How did it not go to a Standing Committee? It dealt with acquisition of land, which is a fundamental relationship any citizen, and his possessions, land, is one of the most important that she/he has. So if we look at all these things then it all ends up with governance. It ends up with transparency. It ends up with accountability. And it really ends up with cleansing and reforming the system of delivery, because unfortunately even technology has to go through the bureaucratic system, you know. They don't have any other system with which it can go through. So we must look at it, I think, in a much more temperate manner. All I am saying is that we need technology, we need human resources; we need to play and we need to ask people where the technology is most relevant to them and use it there. You can't have, my problem with UID, is that it hasn't been passed by the Parliament. Standing Committee has so many objections that have not been dealt with and we were told repeatedly, that it would not be mandatory and compulsory. It is mandatory and compulsory. If you tell me I can't gas, marriages, without UID, bank account with UID.

NDTV: I just want to raise one issue which Naina had just touched upon the fact that growth wise, at least the given numbers of India growing at 5.5%, India in a crisis. Where do we look at the money coming from? Say if we realize the state responsibility for various programmes, I know that you are also leading a campaign for old age pensions. Where do we look at money coming from, if there is such resistance from, say activists? Many have accused the NAC, which you were a part of, of really driving the economy into a crisis. Maybe hyperably, that's one view.

Aruna Roy: You are giving to much credit to the NAC. It's only been suggesting things. Government takes its own decisions.

NDTV: Because it is headed by the Congress President.

Aruna Roy: Maybe, but the government has not taken even the few things that we had recommended, many of these...

NDTV: And the cynical view is that the Food Security Bill wouldn't even have made it as an Ordinance, except for the fact that the elections are around the corner, so the point being that we are announcing the various schemes. Its more about votes and where, who actually pays the bill?

Aruna Roy: Okay, let me tell you that if you look at the corruption levels of the top echelons of India, okay, what about that? What about the fact that the GDP tax ratio is so low? What about the fact that the poor, who get a pittance, are always the first persons to be removed out of any list when you want the country to grow? Why don't you look at people who have the capacity to pay more in terms of tax, in terms of services, why don't you tax them? The problem is why should my gas cylinder be subsidised? I don't want a subsidised gas cylinder even though I now earn the minimum wage and I live with very poor people. My class doesn't need a gas cylinder subsidised, it should pay for its gas. Why should my services be subsidised? Why should so many other things be subsidised? And why should that person in the ground always be the target of everything? The old age pension for the elderly, who have been part of the unorganized sector, is a target. NREGA, which is the lifeline for many people to live with some dignity, not migrate, live there and give their children some kind of social security, is a target. I feel that that's where I come back to the theme of this whole discussion, that the perspective is too lopsided. I think one must, and I am not disagreeing with Dipankar, that there are so many things you have to see on both sides, but you must understand the other side. You can't go there with a prejudice just to dump it in critique. Which is now a fashion in India. So you will have to listen to the other.

Naina Lal Kidwai: And I want to come back on the technology point.

NDTV: I actually want to have Professor Gupta in, because your new book also, 'Revolution From Above', touches on some of these issues. You talk about lack of empathy, talk about the need for a citizen elite to also take much more responsibility for some of these crises we see around us.

Dipankar Gupta: Well yes, it's like this, that it will be very cynical and in fact cold-blooded to say that we should let the poor starve. Or that you should have so many millions of stunted children. I don't think anybody will ever subscribe to that. The question really is what kind of policies do we have? What are the perspectives? Is our perspective to remove poverty or to keep the poor alive? I think this is the real point. And on this we must discuss. Will keeping the poor alive, I think is a good idea. Why should people die? Nobody wants death. But you want to remove poverty, is a totally different thing. Now when you talk about money not being there and the fact is true, the subsidies of various kinds given to people who don't deserve them, the hidden subsidies also, there is corruption at every level. And whenever you do something for say, the social good. I won't even say the Food Security Bill, the social good, you know all those which have a voice in this country make a lot of noise. But the fact is that if you look at the introduction of all positive, social welfare measures, which have made democracy what it is because of which we also survive, all of these measures have nearly always been done when that country was poor and not when it was rich, from the very beginning. We look at the Health Act in Sweden or England or anywhere else or Canada. We look at education, universal health, universal education, Workman's Dwelling Act, Abolition of Child Labour, removal of Corn Law if you go further back. All of these things happened not when they were rich, but when they were poor. And then they became rich. And I went to Basque country recently and spent a lot of time there, simply to see this thing happening in front of my eyes. Basque was very poorly dealt with by Franco and Franco died. Basque sort of regenerated itself, mainly by putting in money in health, education and technology. Today, Basque area is second to Germany in most human development industries. Innovation in this is number one; in alternative energy is number one. How did they do it? They did, not because they didn't say where is the money? There wasn't the money. But they did it because they said we have got to do it. Now just imagine you country has been attacked by some foreign power, will you say we don't have the money so let's surrender? You won't say that. This is a war and you are going to fight it. You cannot ask the question, where is the money? That is the wrong question to ask. Now, when it comes to growth and development and all that business, again Bharat-India contradiction comes up as I said in a bogus form. But look at it this way. If you are doing your work as an industrialist, go ahead do it. Pay your taxes, etc, etc. whatever comes to the government let the government use that productively. Make roads, provide for health; provide for education, and good health, good education is not primary health and primary education. Good health and good education goes from the bottom, right to the very top. Now if you look at research in our country its hardly there. BRICS countries, the middle-income countries, in IT, which we talk about with such fanfare, in IT they spend 17% of the turnover in research and development. We spend 3% in that very high sector, very highly technological industry. We don't have any respect for R&D, which is why, as I was telling you earlier, manufacturing in the country has taken a real hit, quality manufacturing. We talk about petrol taking away, you know buying petrol, taking away our foreign exchange. But do you know what the second biggest spend is? On capital goods, and why should that be? 60 years of Independence and we can't do this, its getting worse. In fact we imported less capital goods earlier than we do today. Why? Because today we are really banking on informal labour all the time and when the informal labour is made to be formal, the industries say but there is something called the Industrial Disputes Act. Of course the Industrial Disputes Act is a bit of a problem. Why not repair it? Why do you do that? But this is the point that I am trying to make, that you cannot talk in terms of band-aids all the time. You have to do something, which is incisive. And I find that this was done in democracies across the world and the citizen elite aspect is important, but that's not in the discussion right now. But what is in discussion is that they were done not when they were rich, but when they were poor and they became rich on account of that. Take Sweden, take England, take Canada, take any of these countries and this is the lesson we learn. And why don't we apply it here? Why do we say where's the money? That is a question that should never be asked.

NDTV: It's really also about the kind of India we want to be. When you look at the debate over poverty line figures. And is it true that India has either made remarkable strides towards ending poverty because we have seen that 138 million people have come out, or do we need to just redefine how we look at poverty?

Dipankar Gupta: I have had this discussion with a large number of people. Poverty figures are a kind of puzzle and intellectual game that economists play. Those economists that like numbers, not those economists that like people. I am not interested in poverty figures because poverty figures are just numbers for me. I open the window, I see poor people. What good does it do to me to say that you are telling me that poverty figures decrease, because when I see every year 39 million people at least going into poverty because they don't get health coverage? At least when 74% of your out of pocket investments is medical expenses what good is this poverty figure for me? It's no good at all. What I want to see instead is delivery. How many malnutritioned children are there? How many people are good at science and technology? How many people have actually contributed to industry? How many people led from the front in terms of democratic innovations, interventions. That is what I want to see. These numbers mean nothing. Number is, as number does. What good are these numbers? The numbers are only good for people who play around with numbers. But, it is no good, as far as I can tell, if you don't actually look at what's happening, it's right out there in front of you.

NDTV: Well I am glad we had a dialogue about it, thank you all very much for joining me.