Bureaucrats should take up job of fighting poverty: Mitra

from The Hindu

New Delhi (PTI): Noted economist Ashok Mitra expressed concerns over the country's abysmally low human development index and said senior bureaucrats should be deputed in poverty-prone districts of the country to implement various development programmes.

Delivering his speech on 'Growth for Whom: Choice or Dilemma?' at the Prem Bhatia Memorial Lecture, Mitra, former West Bengal Finance Minister, said India's low HDI position is apparently of no concern to our politicians and policy makers.

He also said that India's growth story is being driven only by the services sector.

The services sector is growing at a fast rate and industries at a slower pace, while agriculture is lagging behind and the growing sectors are unable to accommodate the displacement of labour in various areas, including construction work, he said.

Stating that growth was uneven across sectors, Mitra said the services sector provided employment to only about 20 per cent of the workforce whereas agriculture and allied services accounted for two-fifth of the total workforce.

Former RBI governor Bimal Jalan, who is a Member of Parliament, however, did not completely agree with Mitra's lecture and said "it is was just one side of the story".

At the function, Nirupama Subramaniam, The Hindu's correspondent in Pakistan, was presented the Prem Bhatia Memorial Award for best political reporting in 2008.