Antardhwani

Smartphone in every hand to bridge digital gap

India is a country with a billion cellphones, but only a quarter of the adult population owns a smartphone. A quarter of the population owns no phone, even today.

Women are far worse off with a recent study showing that 51% of women in Gujarat, one of India’s better off states, do not have a cellphone and even now 567 villages of a total of 18,425 are not connected to the mobile grid. With more and more public services requiring access to a phone and a one time password, those who do not have access get completely marginalised. India’s proportion of adults without access to the mobile and the internet is only slightly better than Tanzania. This is a challenge that needs to be addressed urgently

Equity of access to quality healthcare, education

While income inequality is growing in the country, what is appalling is that number of people who still cannot access health and education services. Per capita incomes have given up.

since the economic reforms and India became a middle-income country a decade ago. However, access to modern healthcare is still elusive for nearly three fourths of the population. While this figure is depressing all over the country, it is downright alarming in the poorer states of the north and the central Hindi speaking belt. In education, access to quality education is even worse. In a country where any escape from poverty depends on access to schools, skills and degrees, the abysmal level of access to quality education has simply eliminated the chance of upward mobility for a large number of the underprivileged.

Affordable healthcare for the poorest

India has the highest number of poor and higher is the cost of healthcare. About 50 million Indians fall into poverty every year because of one episode of illness that in one swoop

takes away the only significant asset that families own and leaves the entire household vulnerable to all the evils of marginalisation. The poor face higher costs on account of severe asymmetry of information and the lack of access to affordable healthcare. Out of pocket expenditure is very high as very few are covered by any kind of insurance. The lack of reliable diagnostic facilities in villages and small towns also leaves the poor suffering for long and accentuates the disease and its aftermath.

Amir Ullah Khan

Economist at Dr. Marri Channa Reddy Human Resource Development Institute

Amir Ullah Khan is a development economist at Dr. Marri Channa Reddy Human Resource Development Institute of the Government of Telangana. He teaches Economics at the Indian School of Business, NALSAR University of Law, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Indian School of Public Policy.

Create opportunities for the rural unemployed

Unemployment levels in India have never been as high as in the post demonetisation and GST era. Covid did not help matters at all. With large layoffs across the manufacturing

sector and the services sector not growing at the rate predicted, the entire onus on providing rural employment has been left to the agriculture sector that is struggling with high input costs, wastages and fluctuating prices. This is the reason there are millions of adults in India who are without jobs now and are even giving up the hope of getting a job, reflected in the falling figures of the workforce comprising those who are working and those looking for jobs. What is most striking and serious is the sharp rise in the number and proportion of the educated unemployed.

Women must gain prominence in India’s growth story

The biggest challenge that India faces is the way we treat our women. On the Global Gender Gap Index 2022, India is ranked 135 out of 146 countries. Sex ratios continue

to be dismal, access to contraception non- existent in large parts, and malnutrition and anaemia among girls and women are rampant across the country. Women rarely own assets and have negligible agency over their own earnings. The female participation in the workforce has plummeted, and in some states the proportion is down to single digits. Social pressure keeps women away from higher education and therefore from higher paid, skilled jobs. The number of cases of sexual harassment, dowry deaths and rape continue to go up, leaving women fragile, helpless, and out of India’s growth story.

What India Needs

Amir Ullah Khan

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