Where is inclusive growth?

A recent visit to Jammu & Kashmir was a true eye opener. No doubts about it, the natural beauty surpasses anything we could have ever seen in our lives. But the past few years of terrorism and militancy have made life so difficult for the people there, put them way behind in terms of development.  

Here in the relative safety of our cities, we enjoy mobile services and even go for change in service providers. There, only postpaid cell phones work and that too, mostly only BSNL. Using a BSNL service, one was reminded of the bad days of MTNL – it never used to work. Ditto for the BSNL network… you try and try and maybe one call could get through. That made one realise how important it is to have competition in the field or else we are made to live with substandard facilities. And the internet is there but not there – it’s so patchy, most of the times, it was non-existent.

Thus for people living there, online shopping or smart apps and mobile banking; all these do not matter. And yes, electricity is also ‘now there - then gone’ types. People there have made peace with the situation as they do not know how life could be lived like the way we do in cities. When we tell them that we have so many cell phone service providers and talk about watching movies on the internet, they simply cannot relate. Oh yes, talking about movies, there is no theater in Srinagar. Malls? They do not exist. The state is like what India was say, 20 -25 years ago.

In this background, one could not help but wonder how far away from reality “Make in India” sounds? There is no basic infrastructure in place, so what inclusive growth are we talking about? If the teeming youth of this beleaguered state are provided with stable employment opportunities, would they turn to anti-social activities?