The Growth Report
- Possible lessons for us -

Amar Yumnam *

Six organisations - Australian Agency for International Development, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, UK Department for International Development, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the World Bank Group sponsored a Commission on Growth and Development two years back.

The Commission, headed by Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Michael Spence of Stanford University, consists of a team of twenty-one academicians and development practitioners; India's Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission is a member of the team.

This Commission has launched its report titled "The Growth Report: Strategies for Sustained Growth and Inclusive Development" on 21 May simultaneously from Cairo, Cape Town, London and New York. This report has already become a major document for rallying debates on Development Economics and development interventions.

Development thinkers and practitioners around the world are already engrossed in examining the implications of the Report so much so that the field is no longer going to be the same from now on.

Experts from the Brookings Institution have even gone to the extent of saying that it [The Growth Report] offers an antidote to the 'Washington Consensus' that stultified development thinking for the past two decades.

I intend on summarising the major insights of the Report expecting that our leaders and our people might give attention to development at least for a while.

Major Insights: The core message of the Report is that growth is not only possible but can as well be sustained. Further, while there is no 'generic formula' for success, there are still so many lessons to be learnt from the successful countries and contextually evolve strategies for growth based on these lessons.

As regards growth dynamics, the Report reemphasises that it does not occur in a vacuum. Rapid and sustained growth is possible only with sustained commitment of the political leaders, 'a commitment pursued with patience, perseverance, and pragmatism'. Learning requires a shorter time frame than inventions. This being so, emphasis has to be given on building capacity for fast learning.

The Report also speaks of an ingredient for fast and sustained growth scarce in this part of the country. For quite some years now, development economist have been talking of the necessity of having a credible and committed political leadership before we can think of achieving growth; growth cannot be ensured by a few ministers standing beside dams or bridges with Mexican hats and shouting at roof-tops.

The Report underlines the necessity of a credible political leadership who can convince and take along the people along a growth strategy and deliver the fruits of development at least to the children of these people. Perseverance, patience and a long-term horizon should be the orientation of this leadership.

In order to make this long term commitment to a growth strategy calls for embedding this in the institutional structure. This is where the significance of technocrats and their institutions arises. We must evolve institutions and let them learn from the developmental interventions.

The Report highlights the significance of infrastructure, education and health as major ingredients for growth. The importance attached to these is understandable in the light of increasing recognition of the role of human capital in development and the growth spill-overs of urbanisation.

What is necessary for the government is to protect people, not industries, firms or jobs. But protecting people calls for providing them education. No development intervention would command acceptability unless it is oriented towards protecting people.

While ensuring equal outcomes to everyone would be impossible, efforts have to be put in for equalisation of opportunities and limiting the inequalities so as to avoid emergence of divisive politics, the Report emphasises.

Lessons for Us: The major message the Report emits, particularly from the angle of Manipur, is the necessity of learning by doing. Every society should evolve development strategies attuned to her own realities while the broad contents are generally indentified from the global development experience, particularly after the end of World War II. This learning by doing should be pursued aggressively.

This evolution and pursuance of appropriate policies calls for two things.

First, we must have a set of institutions in place responsible for evolving and carrying along the memory of lessons of learning by doing.

Secondly, there is the absolute necessity of a political leadership committed to sustained policies and sustained growth, and not just to the immediately measurable benefits of the personal kind.