What is inclusive growth?

Philosophically speaking, the true meaning of inclusive growth would be that “all can take charge of their own lives while also taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions on the world around” (Maira, 2008, 190), and this applies to nations, regions, social groups and individuals. However, here we will restrict ourselves only to the definition used by the Planning Commission.

According to the Plan draft inclusive growth is a pattern of growth in which all social groups, i.e., SCs, STs, OBCs and others such as the minorities, women, rural areas, backward regions, street children, drug addicts, disabled, and old people are also equal beneficiaries.

There are two explicit aims of development: growth and inclusiveness. Eleventh Plan examines the issue of poverty and development by social group at great length. Chapter 6 of Volume 2 is devoted to Social Justice. It looks explicitly at the economic, social, legal and other issues pertaining to development of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Minorities, and Other Vulnerable Groups. At the national level Other Backward Classes (OBCs) were identified as a major target of intervention only recently and the government has reserved 27.5 per cent seats (in educational institutions) and jobs (in Central Government) for those belonging to OBCs. The plan document compared the socio-economic and health indicators of the OBCs with those of the general category and SCs and STs and argued for special attention to be paid to their welfare. Although reliable data on population of OBCs did not exist till then the comparison of their share in the national development clearly showed that they were lagging behind the others and government has to launch policies and programmes for the upliftment of them.