If poverty has to go, growth must touch 10 pc and continue: FM

Chidambaram’s reputation here as one of the architects of India’s economic reforms since 1991, along with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is quite secure.

Earlier in the day after his speech on the Indian economy at the prestigious Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Chidambaram refuted apprehensions that populism had begun to take precedence over reforms, especially in the context of his budget proposals for waiving farm loans. “While markets ensure efficiency”, Chidambaram said, “a democratic governing system ensures that the reform process has a human face.”

While Left critics at home never miss an opportunity to slam his “anti-poor policies”, Chidambaram’s main theme tonight was India’s determination to wipe out the “stain of poverty” from the nation’s fabric. “India’s rediscovery of itself will come only when we wipe out poverty,” Chidambaram declared. He argued that India’s impressive annual growth rates, since he took charge as Finance Minister four years ago, that have hovered around 9 per cent were not good enough.

“India must touch a 10 per cent growth rate and sustain it for 10, 20 and 30 years” to make poverty part of India’s history. “India has no choice but to grow at a rapid rate,” Chidambaram said.

He insisted that economic “growth is not an end in itself”. It was merely “the means to achieve the objectives we desire”. It is about a strategy to “raise resources and acquire the capacity to spend more money on the provision of goods and services that will mitigate the hardship of millions of poor people and bring some cheer in their lives,” he added.

He underlined his “hope and wish” that one of his successors will come to Singapore in the not too distant future and declare that India has eliminated poverty, for so long the principal international signifier of India.

Chidambaram’s book is a collection of the columns he wrote for The Indian Express in the two years before he became India’s Finance Minister for the second time in 2004.

Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express, referred to the newspaper’s loss of many of its columnists, including Chidambaram, for the UPA Government in 2004. He suggested the same might happen if the NDA returns to power in the next general elections.

Talking about the role of The Indian Express as the broad church of Indian journalism, Gupta pointed to the fact that the paper was about to publish a long critique of Chidambaram’s latest budget by senior BJP leader and former Union Minister Arun Shourie.

Talking of his experience as a columnist for The Indian Express, Chidambaram was pleased that he missed the deadline only twice in two years.

Tonight Chidambaram had a lot more to show off than his writing discipline as a columnist. He was basking in the glory of presiding over one of the most sustained and significant expansions of the Indian economy since independence. Uday Kotak of Kotak Mahindra hosted Chidambaram’s book signing ceremony.