'Judge growth by gauging welfare of poor'

MUMBAI: Professor Kaushik Basu has called for co-ordinated efforts at reducing income inequalities at a global level as the concern is not restricted to India and other emerging market economies, but has started even in the Scandinavian countries known for equalities in income.

Speaking at a seminar organised by the department of statistics, RBI, in Mumbai, Mr Basu said India had had a record 9% growth for two years and is expected to continue this momentum.

The country has benefited by globalisation as also certain global and social developments, notably the US effort, to end a bipolar world and stem the emerging supremacy of China. But at the same time, he expressed concerns over the rising inequalities of income in the country.

“At the end of the day, a country should be judged by how the bottom end of the economy is doing,” he said. This concern over the growing divide between the rich and the poor is not only confined to India and China, but also there in many other economies like Japan and some in the Scandinavian region.

This could be one of the fallouts of globalisation, he said. Given this trend, he called for an inter-co-ordinated effort by all countries to solve this problem on the lines of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that addresses foreign trade issues of all economies and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which is engaged in labour reforms.