Amir Ullah Khan, Development and Trade Economist, explains how agricultural, education and labour sector have been excluded from the purview of the liberal reforms and the detrimental impact of this exclusion.
Read the transcript below:
These three sectors are sectors that typically stand out as ones that have not been touched by liberalisation. The big one is agriculture. No reforms, no liberalisation. The most draconian regulation that exist , and therefore the sector struggles, the farmer struggles. Education sector; whatever reforms we see in education seems to be two steps backward and therefore again you have this ridiculous situation where you have large number of students not being able to get into decent colleges. Foreign universities not being allowed to open in the country. Very poor quality of faculty even today, absolutely no research and that sector continues to flounder. The third sector that you find, is again, a very serious problem as far as India is concerned, is labour. No reform, large number of unorganised labour, unprotected labour, social security issues, lack of productivity, problems with either hiring or removing labour. But certainly what is the big poster boy of liberalisation continues to be the IT sector, where you just allowed it to play out and do extremely well. In fact most of the service sector has benefitted from liberalisation. One sector that is close to my heart is cricket. I take a look at how cricket has transformed, we now allow foreign investment in cricket, we allow foreign players in cricket, we have the world’s largest player. It’s a good example of how when you allow people to exercise their entrepreneurship and innovation then new markets open up.
