We in India are anxious to avoid these latent short-comings in an approach based on 'pure' economic growth. We have consciously adopted a policy of a more equitable distribution of the fruits of development alongside increasing industrialisation and production in a manner that will at once provide a higher level of employment and avoid imbalances. We seek to make economic progress, therefore, an integral part of this general progress towards social justice and freedom and individual dignity. We realise that this synthesis is not easy to achieve and will call for fundamental institutional or structural changes. But we are trying to find answers in our own way.
Whatever justification Prof. Myrdal may have in referring to India as a "soft State" some years ago -- and he had some -- there is no softness today in the sense of avoiding hard but necessary decisions even if they hurt some entrenched vested interests. There is. of course, softness in the sense of an acute concern for the weak and the underprivileged as also for our age-old values of tolerance and freedom. But I am sure Prof. Myrdal was not speaking of such softness.
To give you only a few examples of the kind of new initiatives we have taken to combine growth with social justice, I may refer to a number of new programmes which have been taken up over the past two years and which we propose to expand greatly over the coming years. Many areas in India suffer from drought for three or four out of five years. Special programmes for these areas have been taken up to provide security of livelihood. In each district, a crash programme of rural works on a limited scale has been started to provide employment for at least one person from each family which has no employed member. In selected districts, special programmes for small farmers and marginal farmers have been taken up. A nutritional programme for children, special programmes for drinking water supply in the rural areas, homesites for landless labour, slum-improvement in congested areas and schemes for educated unemployed have been taken in hand. For Calcutta, which is our worst urban conglomeration, a greatly expanded programme of urban development has been entrusted to a newly created separate authority. In addition, ceilings on agricultural land are being lowered and land reforms more vigorously implemented where implementation in the past was tardy. Taxation of wealth, particularly urban buildings, has been greatly increased. The banks, which were nationalised two years ago, have done a remarkable job of opening branches in small rural areas so that they can give productive credit to hitherto neglected sectors like small farmers, self-employed persons and the like. Disparities between different regions are also receiving increasing attention.
