Gujarat model OR Gujarat muddle?

Scholars have shown that Gujarat’s development achievements are actually far from dazzling. The State has grown fast in the last twenty years. And anyone who travels around Gujarat is bound to notice the good roads, mushrooming factories, and regular power supply. But what about people’s living conditions? Whether we look at poverty, nutrition, education, health or related indicators, the dominant pattern is one of indifferent outcomes. Gujarat is doing a little better than the all-India average in many respects, but there is nothing there that justifies it being called a “model.” Anyone who doubts this can download the latest National Family Health Survey report and verify the facts.

• Development economist and activist John Dreze today said there was "no evidence" that the so-called "Gujarat Model" was a model in any sense, pointing out to the state's backwardness in social indicators.
• Almost all ranking of development indicators, whether it is social indicators, human development index, child development index, multi-dimensional poverty index and all the standard poverty indexes of the planning commission. Gujarat almost always comes around the middle.
• It was the case much before Modi became chief minister and it remained the case after that, said Dreze, who helped draft the first version of NREGA (now called the MNREGA).
• He describes the Gujarat's development model as a counter-example, because of the disappointing social indicators inspite of the high growth in terms of standard economic indicators.
• Dreze believes that something lacking and it can be an illustration of the limitations of relying on private-enterprise growth for development in the larger sense.
• Commenting on ratings-agency Moody's recent upgrade of India's sovereign-credit rating to 'Baa2' from 'Baa3', Dreze says he doubts the credibility of such an index. "If you dig into the methods behind these indexes, there is very little to them, except that they are taken seriously!"
• He also raised concerns about the Aadhaar scheme, fearing that it will create an infrastructure of surveillance. His opposition to Aadhaar was not related to welfare programmes, but civil liberties. Aadhaar multiplies the power of the state to keep track of everybody over time - he said, flagging apprehensions that it could lead to stifling of dissent, as a lot of the databases that are going to be linked will become accessible to the government.
• Dreze partly blamed the stagnation of agricultural growth for the unrest and the recent agitations of Patidars, Jats and others for reservations. The people, who have seen the size of their landholding shrink with the population explosion in the last few decades, have certainly suffered. That creates a sense of grievance, but there must be other things also.

 

Read the article "Gujarat Muddle" dated April 11, 2014

Any development model with Public Private Partnership (PPP) is fundamentally flawed and unsustainable because it enables few enterprising people become extraordinarily rich at the state expense, breeding corruption and impoverishes the state and its people. The state ends up paying huge amounts of money in future payments in the range of 2-10 times. Consequently rich poor divide will increase. Modi's Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train is another white elephant in disguise which will enable Japan loot away our money perennially. Development based on market borrowing is not development at all but is similar to selling family silver for fancy expenses. 

Health is wealth

Health is defined as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity. Just because your body is free of disease doesn’t mean you are healthy! Health is as important to a person as is wealth. Only a healthy person can work with efficiency to earn wealth.

Earning more money is good, however forgetting our responsibility towards health is not right. To earn more, one needs to work more. But bad health reduces our body and mind capacity to work more. An unhealthy body gets tired very easily. And a tired body easily loses motivation and self-confidence. If the youth doesn’t acquire healthy habits the nation can’t become strong.

Maintaining good health requires regular good habits and a disciplined life to be healthy. Good habits like regular exercise, balanced diet, positive thoughts, cleanliness and fresh environment help to maintain a healthy body.

Physical exercises are planned repetitive bodily activities that are done to gain good health and maintain physical and mental fitness. Physical exercises repair the body or a part of the body. It strengthens the body and makes the body muscles stronger. It helps to lose excess body weight and prevent obesity. Also, it helps to delay the process of aging and keeps a person healthy and young for a longer time.

Balanced diet helps to maintain or improve overall health. Proper nutrition is required for the organs and tissues of the body to work effectively. A healthy diet provides all the essential nutrients to the body. A balanced diet provides an adequate amount of fluid, protein, essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, and calories to the body.

Personality traits such as optimism and pessimism can affect many areas of your health and well-being. The positive thinking that usually comes with optimism is a key part of effective stress management which is associated with many health benefits. An unhealthy mind results in an unhealthy body. Good mental health helps you to make the most of life and enjoy it.

For attaining a healthy and disease free body cleanliness is very important. A fresh environment leads to a fresh and healthy body. It reduces the risk of catching communicable diseases. A disease free environment is called a healthy environment. And to obtain a fresh environment it is the responsibility of the people to inculcate healthy habits.

Now is the right time to start working on one’s physical and mental fitness. It is never late anytime. Whenever a person realizes the importance of good habits, it is the right time to start working on it.  One should keep this in mind and take healthy steps for a better tomorrow.

Who lives medically, lives miserably ... a Latin proverb

Hard work is not the path to well-being. 

Feeling good is the path to well-being ... Abraham Hicks

Gender wage gap?

• The gender pay gap is the average difference between a man's and a woman's wages or salaries.
• The Constitution of India guarantees the right to equality and prohibits discrimination, and the 1976 Equal Remuneration Act reinforces this without prejudice to special measures like maternity leave. But laws are rarely enough.
• Gender wage gaps begin at home. In fact, early feminist posters would state that women have to do twice the work men did to earn half as much.
• We value anything that men do more than anything that women do. 
• Men work in sectors that are better organized, better regulated and better paid. 
• Women in India earn 27 per cent less than men in most places;
  If a man got Rs 100, a woman can expect to get Rs 73, for the same job.
• In the United States, in 2015, women working full time typically were paid just 80 percent of what men were paid, a gap of 20 percent?
• At every level of academic achievement, women’s median earnings are less than men’s median earnings, and in some cases, the gender pay gap is larger at higher levels of education. The gender pay gap is worse for mothers, and it only grows with age.
• Unequal pay for equal work is only one explanation for why women earn less.
• Poorer childhood nutrition results in poorer health lifelong and lower productivity.
• Lack of access to educational opportunities lock women into low-skilled or unskilled jobs, which, by definition, pay less.
• Society keeps women from acquiring more than functional literacy locks them into poverty.
• With poverty comes vulnerability to displacement and exploitation.
• In a crisis or downturn, women are the first to lose their jobs and the last to receive compensation. 
• They rarely own assets and, lacking capital, struggle to raise money for entrepreneurship. 
• Patrilocal marriage means they start adult life without the social capital men have that enables them to find work, raise credit or identify mentors.
• In India, women make up only 28 per cent of the labour force.
• On an average, women work 537 minutes a day and men 442.
• 66% of the work women do is unpaid as opposed to 12% in the case of men.
• The ILO estimates it will take 70 years to close the gender wage gap.
• Society expects that women will put household and family needs above their professional growth. Girls often make educational choices that reflect this limitation.
• Women make up only 15% of those who work in the area of research and development.
• Throughout their careers women are likely to take time off to have and raise children or care for family elders. Anticipating this, they are offered less money and less responsibility at every stage.
• Women make up only 10% of publicly traded company board memberships.

While unmarried women earns almost equal to men, marriage and unequal work division at home effects their earnings and career growth. Motherhood and subsequent child care compels women to commit less time to work and that effects their salary. Children are particular in damaging woman's career. The causes of the gender pay gap are complex. In the past, a substantial proportion of the gender pay gap was due to factors such as differences in education, the occupations and industries that men and women work in, or the fact that women are more likely to work part-time. The majority of the gender pay gap is now driven by “unexplained” factors impacting negatively on women and differences in men’s and women’s choices and behaviors.

The most important obstacle to wage equality, however, lies in our attitudes. When women value themselves enough to fight for their due, and when society values all human beings equally, the gender wage gap will cease to be an issue.

My View:
Pay parity and lack of presence in leadership roles are issues worldwide, not just in India. Every where in the world, women are underpaid at work and unpaid for their domestic work. A lesson in the textbook in Chhattisgarh in 2015 claimed that “working women are one of the causes of unemployment” in the country indicating regressive mindset prevalent in the country. Women carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men. The invisibility of such women workers is essential for the survival of society and provides a huge and unnoticed subsidy to the formal economy. SBI chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya says that few women get to the top because for most, it’s almost determined at entry that they would quit midway through their careers to take up responsibilities at home. If women could participate in the economy on an equal footing with men, India could add $2.9 trillion i.e. 60% of the $5 trillion GDP by 2025. Even if India manages to match the best country in the region on this measure, it would add $700 billion to its economy and increase its growth rate by 1.4%.