CHENNAI: Fruits of development had not reached all sections of Indian public, said eminent Economics author-professor Sampath Mukherjee during a lecture at the DG Vaishnav College on Tuesday.
“Development has both quantitative and qualitative sides. There has only been 0.2 per cent increase in the total number of jobs created in the organised sector since the reforms were made. And agriculture was neglected in the reform period,” said Mukherjee, a professor at St Xavier’s college, Kolkata, and a alumnus of London School of Economics.
He said that spending a fraction of the money spent by the government to host poverty conferences, on poverty alleviation would have yielded better results.
Taking a dig at the stock market, Mukherjee compared it to the Raj Kapoor film ‘Sapno ka Saudagar’. “Every man will have expectations and with expectations comes uncertainty. Stock markets make use of that,” he said, adding that luck was the most important variable in a person’s life.
He compared the present Central Government’s promise of providing employment to all to former Prime Minister Morarji Desai’s statements, and said that it would not be easy to create ‘full employment’ in a country like India.