 Let me draw your attention to one of the early development compacts that the country was thinking about on the eve of independence. You know the famous Karachi Declaration which was the Congress convention of 1931 in Karachi and there was the so-called Karachi resolution of Karachi Declaration which for the first time was trying to highlight in a very brief manner some of the core principles which should guide the onward march of the nation after independence. After that we had a much fuller version of many of the themes discussed there in NPC National Planning Committee which was set up in 1938 with Pandit Nehru as the chair of it. But soon after that we had the breaking of the second world war and Nehru was put behind bars and many others sort of were engaged with all kinds of other challenges and hence it was suspended. The work of NPC was suspended. Subsequently after the second world war we had again a slew of very useful and fruitful discussions about where we should be headed, what we should be doing and so on between 1944 and 1949 or so finally culminating with the Planning Commission which as all of you know has been now done away with. We have something called the Niti IO. So I don't want to get into all these different moments but I just wanted to start with one or two very critical ideas which were put forth in the Karachi resolution. Let you know permit me to quote from that. This Congress is of opinion that to enable the masses to appreciate what Swaraj as conceived by the Congress will mean to them. It is desirable to state the position of the Congress in a manner easily understood by them. In order to end the exploitation of the masses political freedom must include real economic freedom and then it goes on. Now that in some sense is the crux of what founding mothers and fathers of our country visualize and much of what was being discussed has to do with dimensions of economic freedom. So an obvious question which one would like to ask are we anywhere close to what one can consider even rudimentary economic freedom for very large sections of the population. Now since you are discussing small and marginal farmers etc many of you would be aware of it. If you look at the most recent farmer situation assessment survey and look at the average income of an average cultivating household from cultivation. Sometimes they have some other sources as well but if you just look at the average income from cultivation for an average household the annual income it is 36,000 rupees. We are talking of 3000 rupees per month right average debt for an average cultivating household is 46,000 rupees. So for an average cultivating household they're actually talking of an extent of indebtedness of an order of 10,000 rupees. If you take into account income from all other sources it's quite possible that in the cultivating household as you know you know somebody is in some pity production small shop shops and raising dairy or poultry farm you know if you take into account everything else then the average income comes to about 76,000 per annum right which gives them a net income taking into account all the sources if you just for debt as well then we are talking of barely 30 yeah or thousand or so and that's the sort of situation we are talking about now what do we expect of course of course the all that is there there's disguised unemployment there is unemployment there is you know a whole lot of other things but we are talking of still you know close to if you're thinking in terms of dependence on primary sector right and we are talking not only of workers but also those who are dependent we are still talking about 65, 66 percent of the population being primarily dependent on the primary sector. So for all of us whether as academics as bankers and you know many other segments of particularly public provisioning it becomes an extremely important question to ask are we really honoring you know what we thought come 80, 90 years ago should we are founding vision the same document you know this is this is the first document where fundamental rights and directive principles etc were mentioned and discussed I will not go into many of the details I just want to raise just a couple of issues there right with respect to labor for instance the document said the organization of economic life must conform to the principle of justice to the end that it may secure a decent standard of living so obviously with that number which we just discussed you know we need to ask can we call it decent at all or how far are we from a notion of decency says that the state shall safeguard the interests of industrial workers and shall secure for them by suitable legislation and in other ways a living wage healthy conditions of work limited hours of labor suitable machinery for the settlement of disputes between employers and workmen and protection against the economic consequences of old age thickness and unemployment I will not read very much more from this document to you but just reflect for a moment on this paragraph right and we can see how removed we are from what we had pledged what we had promised to ourselves and so on so I think our development challenges what we are doing in terms of our economic strategy right whether the shift was good bad ugly from certain kind of macroeconomic strategy till 1980s and then what we started doing from early 90s onwards no I think it to me it seems very obvious that we should try and assess these with respect to some of the core promises that we have made to ourselves right article 39b it says that you know of the constitution that every citizen must have adequate means for a decent livelihood adequate means now which could be either job that all of us hold in this room or some assets landlessness in this country if you go by the more realistic assessments and not by sort of questionable estimates that we have we are talking of approximately 44 percent of rural population being landlady actually increased from over a short period 10 years or so from about 35 to 44 percent so people are losing their land critical means of livelihood and so on right so there is something which is happening in the economy in spite of all our effort you know a few good things that you try and do yeah in spite of that the broader direction possibly is one which should make us sit up and get worried rightly this whole issue of ultra left violence was mentioned if you do a simple gis mapping right it's a bizarre thing the richest pockets in India are also the poorest in terms of the income that people are enjoying from that and almost all of it is tribal dominated population by dominated I do not mean more than 50 percent but you know the substantial portion of the rivals so it is a very interesting thing which is which should again as I said bother us and the richest pocket poorest people you know why why why we put up in that kind of scenario clearly all this has to do with the questions of economic policies the questions of what we have been doing through a variety of public institutions including our bank right now if you look at what has happened as regards the access of the small and marginal farmers to the banking segment right look at various official sources which you have and most of you know the numbers increasingly they are being the access right people who work on these things that they actually paint a pretty frightening picture of what has happened if you look at for instance agricultural laborers you know about 20 25 years ago even agricultural laborers had some access to better access to the formal banking sector even when they did not have collateral and so on which becomes a necessary condition right now the percentage of agricultural laborers who have access to formal sector has gone down drastically so these are some of the obvious challenges which I thought we should begin by flagging then I want to come to the larger global context within which you know we also need to look at India and as all of you know that the situation in the last decade or so in particular has been a difficult one right in terms of the basic indicator and what are these basic indicators growth employment poverty and these are some of the basic indicators that we can get into much more nuanced good quality indicators like quality of education quality of health etc but even if for the moment we choose to start with the more sort of gross kind of indicators not very nuanced indicators there is near unanimity that the world has been in a pretty distressed state at least for the last 10 years or so you know this whole business of economic and financial crisis as all of you know as bankers 2007 onwards what started in the US spread to the rest of the world and that is considered to be a period of the downturn from which we have not really emerged in fact the latest trade and development report which was released very recently and I just got an overview chapter from there to raise a couple of issues with you this report which is called trade and development report 2017 beyond austerity towards a global new D and it actually starts with a very good quote from Martin Luther King 50 years ago at New York Riverside Church Martin Luther King made a passionate plea for a more equal more just more peaceful a more dignified world calling for a radical revolution of values King concluded we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing oriented society to a person oriented society when machines and computers profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people the giant triplets of racism extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered now that is unfortunately the phase we have been in for a pretty long time not only for the last 10 years but for almost 40 odd years or so right beginning from early 1970s if you look at the global story in India it's roughly about 25 years or so to be do a few small good things but along with that we possibly are also doing very large terrible things now whether this is with respect to your sector or economic policies and so on and how do we just these good or bad I would say let us go back to 1931 let us go back to our constitution and nothing can be more sacred as a book to all of us than our constitution I think that possibly should be kept up there and any other religious book way below that right if that is our value system and then we start judging it with respect to that then I think we are in a serious serious sort of difficulty in terms of claiming that we are on the right track I think it should be a major concern and with with with respect to that just to flag you know two three important things so if you look at for instance what's happening to some of the core macro indicator and if you look at growth for instance during the last decade or so we know that growth continues to be in a fragile zone right every once in a while we talk of some green shoots here some green shoots there but almost every agency tells us that you know this is a difficult story that continues you know if we look at the story of Anika if you're interested I can give you growth figures for all the major countries all the major if that comes up during the discussion but for the moment it will not get into that if you look at employment story we are told that for the last 25 years we are talking of jobless growth whether it's World Bank whether it is untat report whether it is ILO whether it is OECD you know you just name it everyone is agreed on this that we basically have had a long period of jobless growth closer home if you look at India you know he sort of in 2010 11 it was agreed that since our job data is generated with huge lag you know and the major source of our job data is national sample survey organization reports on employment unemployment poverty etc large surveys are conducted once every five years so the last one actually was 11 12 so it was agreed and decided that we should have some way of figuring out what is happening year to year so ministry of commerce decided it was given this responsibility that okay you produce this report through with the help of labor bureau and through labor bureau on what's happening to employment and so on as all of you would know government's official estimate is that every year 10 to 12 million new job seekers currently enter the labor market right the promise by the party in power you know just before elections was that given also the backlog and given the number of new entrants we should aim at producing 20 million jobs a year two crores so that the backlog can also be taken care of and the new entrants can be accommodated you know this was one of the major plans of the campaign by bjp and the sort of party which is in power at the center now let me just give you some numbers right all these decent jobs and good jobs which are supposed to be made available 11 12 given this requirement of at least 10 to 12 million right country was barely producing about 11.5 lakh new jobs net jobs additional jobs this is what the labor bureau tells you that was already a period when things were in the economy getting into some difficulties and even though china and india did weather the storm of the global crisis much better than most other countries amongst large economies but we're on the job front you're sort of not doing well even then what was the data for 2015 16 after which incidentally the government has told labor bureau not to do this survey anymore this has been stopped right what is the figure 1.5 lakh 11.5 lakhs in 11 12 1.5 lakhs in 15 16 now where are we headed after this the kind of situation that we have in many of our urban pockets in terms of crime in terms of you know sheer desperation of various kinds etc so as in the larger global story so in India even though India in terms of growth rate has done better than most other countries in the developing world as well with reference to large economies and so on where are we located right some of you might have read this newspaper report from Maharashtra this is about one month old report where this tribal boy kind of is unemployed is with one of his friends has some local hooch etc you know then asks his friend for some food the friends is look you know there's nothing in my kitchen what can I do right he goes back to his little shack or hut asks his mother that give me something mother says there's nothing you know you haven't got anything for last several days no jobs no nothing and we have been hungry for the last couple of days right he pounces on his mother opens her heart takes it out mixes some pickles with that and it's just I mean the extreme dehumanization that we can push a person to now not saying that this boy was evil right but an instance of cannibalism and it's produced by the system that of course is a huge extreme but we have a situation let's say in daily where you know some 30 years ago 35 years ago when I came here as a student you really saw security guards it was really reserved for very high and mighty okay now go to any tiny little colony these days you have guards in two shifts three shifts and so on security has have been the fastest growing employment in this landscape of no employment otherwise and who are we trying to protect ourselves from our fellow brothers and sisters fellow citizens earlier sort of government at the center had the finance minister home minister portfolio holding very eminent citizen Mr. Chidambaram I I don't like naming people in such conversations but sometimes it is unavoidable what did he launch vis-a-vis Central India he called it operation green hunt who were we trying to hunt the dispossessed adivas now that becomes the mindset of those who are supposed to be the guardians of the country of the constitution etc then we are in a very very difficult situation it's a very sorry state of affairs in that sense if you look at many other challenges this report which I was mentioning earlier this uncad report that he talks about says that extremely disturbing fact that in spite of all the misdeeds the finance capital continues to rule the rules continues to be in the driver's seat in the most powerful country in the world you know as I put it there is a revolving door between the wall street and the white house those who are ruling the wall street become advisors to whoever it is mr. x mr. y doesn't matter the economic policies that we have by and large is towards the benefit of a very narrow segment 0.01 percent 0.1 percent and so on forth you know there are all kinds of in the last decade or so I'm sure you're very frequently in newspapers in your own writings in your own sort of conversations have heard things like one percent versus 99 percent economists like Joseph Stiglitz who are talking about this massive inequality Thomas Piketty you know who has recently talked about how inequality in India today is as bad as it was during 1920s and 30s this is that from 1950 to 1980s you know it really had come down very significantly and early 90s onwards the trend changes now all these obviously are connected with the kind of policies that we have pursued including the banking policies no as you know your sector extremely well I need not remind you that even the definition of direct and indirect was changed in terms of priority sector lending and what was the net outcome of that basically creating difficulties for the smaller character right so I just earlier also mentioned that I don't really want to get into the nitty-gritty of the banking issues because you are the master you know everything I need to learn from you but some of the broad messages which we get from what this sector has been doing unfortunately in spite of all your efforts it has tended to go in a direction which may not be very welcome so what are the things that we need to do it's extremely important to think of strategies towards recovery of the economy with the focus on employment inclusion etc now for that recovery regulation is fundamental and sometimes regulations can generate bad outcomes we know that and that has a lot to do with the political economy and as was being mentioned all kinds of influences are at work but unfortunately even in a sort of relatively deregulated economy those influences seem to be extremely powerful if not more powerful in a lighter way and since the nation is talking about it right now all of you know about their share right how some 50,000 becomes 80 crores in one year right now clearly some you know in a deregulated economy huge amount of political peddling must have been done nobody's questioning the fact as you know right so if you look at simply the penalties which many of the biggest players have agreed to pay Morgan Stanley for instance last year it agreed to pay 900 million US dollars admitting wrongdoing okay and said all right so 900 million dollars is like peanuts for you know Morgan Stanley right company after company amazon and so on forth if you look at several rulings in last two three four years and this is all right fine but all this is happening in the era of what is you know deregulated decontrolled kind of global economic regime so it's not the case that you know regulation creates rents and creates all kinds of wrong doings and so on when the deregulated regimes can probably do much worse so regulation is something which must be brought which ought to be brought back in the global economic system it is extremely important to have an overall strategy which is aimed at recovery recovery not only of GDP growth rate because you can have growth rate but if there is no employment if there are no jobs what is the point of that growth we really need to focus on you know where the jobs can be created for instance if you look at Indian economy India's economic enterprises the latest economic sensor is 2014 it tells us that we have 585 million enterprises of which barely 0.278 percent not even 1 percent not even half percent the quarter of a percent is in terms of numbers is large or organized sector and all of you know the definition of the organized sector in India 10 workers would move rest 99 percent plus is unorganized enterprises any economic strategy needs to reach out to them help them if we are interested in inclusive development if you're interested in jobs and so on right at the world economic forum you must have seen in the news none other than Sunil Bharti right he says the top 200 companies are shedding jobs top 200 companies in India are shedding jobs laying off people and he was saying that if that is the case then what will what what must be happening with the rest of the economy which is connected with us we need to think about it and unfortunately what was the response of our one of our ministers who responded no we should not be worried about that those who get shed off they will become entrepreneurs is that is that the way to think about how we are going to revive the job situation the employment situation etc you know we have been carried away by slogans like startups every bd and pun vendor is a startup right and that startup has been there since times immemorial right are we concerned about them at all shouldn't we be concerned about all these startups and should we be concerned only with you know startups which begin from 50 000 and end up with 80 crores and these are some of the questions which we need to ask NPA was mentioned all of you know that close to 100 biggest players account for close to 70 percent of the NPA in the country should we trust them anymore if we are really interested in addressing the challenge of NPA right of course you know this bankruptcy law and you know the way these potentially may have some good implications yeah I don't know how long it will take I mean to clean up this whole NPA situation all of you probably know it better than I do the difficulties there etc but sometimes we say you know all this is because of all these irresponsible formats now how dishonest can we get I remember when this Mahatma Gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme had to be launched and you had a number of economists some of them are part of the economic advisory council of the prime minister today they said that this will ruin India this will destroy India India will be finished you know this will cost 278 000 crores somebody said 1 lakh whatever whatever even at that point in time close to 600 lakh crores was all of you know exemptions of various kinds right I mean that was the story even then so at that point in time it just as it happens I you know this was a closed door meeting but somehow I I was included in that meeting as an observer and so on right there where this meeting was was happening and members of planning commission they were saying no no no it's impossible we can't go ahead with the scheme and so on forth and one senior congress leader he after many rounds of conversation where everyone seemed completely opposed to it he said listen madam wants it pull stop immediately the tone of the planning commission changed everyone started saying no no no we have to find resources to ensure that this happened the nation did not go bankrupt because of that it's not the case that that scheme put such massive burden and so on forth you know in 2007 I was doing a small survey in Anantpur in Andhra Pradesh and I came across an elderly lady she was more than 70 year old in 48 degrees centigrade picking the mud from one place to another and I just asked why are you doing this she said this is what keeps me alive right so we really need to put in perspective that's why I started with Karachi resolution and Karachi declaration you know when we say that country is doing good or bad or ugly I mean what are the benchmark how do we assess these right and then we ask okay what kind of strategies might work better towards those goals with that let me stop if you have any comments questions clarifications interventions I will be very happy to engage with you and thank you for this opportunity thank you for your attention