6. Development : No Alternative to Hard Work
ANY ATTEMPT TO put our tasks and objectives in a clearer focus must be preceded by an assessment of our achievements, our failures, our strength and our weakness in their correct perspective. A heart-searching of this kind alone can be of critical value to us in tackling the challenges that we must face up to, if India of our dream is to become a reality within the foreseeable future. I propose to take this opportunity to undertake such an exercise to the extent possible within the short time at my disposal.
During the two decades or so that have elapsed since the inception of planned programmes of development, national income has doubled. We have been able to greatly expand, diversify and modernise our industry. There has been a substantial rise in agricultural production; in recent years agricultural growth has gathered momentum, thanks to the success of the "green" revolution. As a consequence, we are now entering the era of self-sufficiency in food. Despite the fact that there are 220 million more Indians today than at the time of independence, the output of goods and services per person has increased significantly. Yet, we are a long way off from adequately solving the massive problems of poverty and unemployment. The absolute number of those living below the poverty line has scarcely diminished. Unemployment is threatening to become a serious and chronic problem. The concentration of new industries around some of the existing industrial agglomerations has aggravated the problem of regional imbalances. The distribution of goods and services has often turned out to be much less egalitarian than was intended; and economic disparities appear to have widened. Growing concentration of economic power, often accompanied by strong monopolistic tendencies, has come to the fore in a number of areas. Progress in the past has, thus, been inadequate to solve some of the basic problems and has given rise to a number of new ones.
It is not my intention to belittle our success so far in developing and modernising our economy. In the domain of industrial development our achievements have been both solid and substantial. Since the beginning of the First Five Year Plan there has been a more than three-fold increase in industrial output. Thanks to the diversification of the industrial capacity, we now produce a wide gamut of industrial products ranging from basic intermediates to a variety of sophisticated types of industrial equipment. We have become virtually self-sufficient in the matter of meeting the equipment needs of railways, road transportation and communications.