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The rewards of 'opening up' the economy go disproportionately to the more privileged

But Kerala has been slow in reforming economic policies in a market friendly direction. Some of its well meaning egalitarian policies, for example, the fixing of unrealistically high rural minimum wages, may have discouraged economic growth within the region and could have led to the migration of economic enterprises across the borders to neighbouring states. While people from Kerala have easily earned good money working elsewhere (often abroad in the Persian Gulf), the opportunity of taking economic initiatives at home has remained limited.

This has not prevented, I should emphasise, Kerala from experiencing a very rapid reduction in the incidence of poverty -- one of the fastest in India, as the World Bank has recently acknowledged. But the full economic potentials of Kerala's social advantages remain unreaped. If the combination of social development and encouragement of commerce makes a 'dynamic package' for fast and participatory economic growth, much of India severely fails the first part of the twin requirements (that is social development) in addition to various degrees of failure of the second (that is, in encouraging commerce). Kerala has problems -- serious difficulties -- mainly with the second.

Indeed, as the different states reconsider the possibility of economic reforms, it is hard to escape the impression that the Communist leadership in West Bengal has more of an active agenda for encouraging commerce than has the mixed communist and Congress government in Kerala. This is a matter that Kerala will have to address seriously.

The road ahead for India will depend much on the integration of different concerns: preservation of democracy (greater use of the power of politicisation and public debates), rapid social progress (particularly in education, health care, land reforms and gender equity), and encouragement of commerce and economic expansion (consolidating the scope for competition, incentives and openness, while removing barriers to mobility and equity).

India has suffered in the last half a century from ignoring the need for such an integrated approach, and the tendency towards partial neglect, especially of social development, continues even today in much of India.

Where the level of social development is high, particularly in Kerala, the priority has to be on the encouragement of commerce and economic expansion. However, for the bulk of the country, the absence of social development is at least as big an obstacle to progress as counter productive commercial policies that call for reform. The penalty of social neglect can be extremely large, and encouragement to commerce, under economic reforms, cannot be divorced from the extreme need for social development.

Inequality in India is not only a serious barrier to social justice, it has ended up being a major obstacle to general economic and social progress. Illiteracy, ill health, economic insecurity and the neglect of women's interests and powers not only hurt the deprived, but also make it hard to achieve general economic and social progress. Nothing is as debilitating for India's social health as the continued disparities in social opportunities. The chain of potential economic progress snaps at its weakest link.

What then is the overall assessment? The important point is not so much that India's record is distinctly 'mixed' -- that it certainly is -- but that the mixture takes the form of considerable overall achievement combined with major deprivations for substantial groups of people.

Our great achievement in democracy gives power, in principle, to all, though the sharing of it in practice is significantly unequal. The growth of the Indian economy is now improved, but the rewards of the 'opening up' go disproportionately to the more privileged.

Most significantly, the social achievements are extremely unequal, illustrated by remarkable expansion in higher education in a half illiterate country, and by excellent medical services for some ailments combined with very poor general health care. The lack of adequate economic support for basic social development is reinforced by a largely unscrutinised commitment to massive military expenditure.

It is on the sharing of social opportunities that the hope of a more just society rests. This is an important precondition of participatory economic growth, so that equity in social matters has rewards beyond its immediate contribution to progress in equitable enjoyment of quality of life. In bringing about this shift, the use of the opportunities of democratic practice has to be more robustly seized, through the politicisation of systematic deprivation and resistance to inequality. That is has not yet been seized is as much a failure of political opposition as of those in office. The unequal predicaments go with a shared failure of social responsibility.

We certainly can do a lot better in bringing about a closer approximately to justice of the kind that fired the imagination of those who fought for and achieved the Independence of India half a century ago. The old objectives call for a new commitment.