IMPROVING THE ECONOMY FOR EVERYONE
Address by Arun Maira at the 16th Convocation of Integral University Lucknow
on 17th February 2025
It is a great honor to speak to the students of Integral University and their families in the presence of the dignitaries who have graced this occasion. I thank Prof. Akhtar, the Founder and Chancellor of the University for inviting me to speak at the University’s 16th Convocation.
I am especially delighted to speak in a university in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, the state which provided my family with a home when we came as refugees from Lahore with the partition of India in 1947. We lived as refugees in our own country in a modest house in Govindpuri, in Meerut district, where my father was provided some land by the UP government to rebuild the manufacturing business he had to abandon very suddenly, along with our home in Lahore, in August 1947. He had to work very hard to build his business again. He travelled to Lucknow often for the permissions he needed to start-up and run his small enterprise. It wasn’t easy to start-up a small enterprise then. I believe it has become easier today.
When I was growing up, life was hard for my family. But there was a spirit of building a new nation together which made me proud to be an Indian. Hum seekheyn gay, aur karayen gay, aur karke dikhayengay ke hum kisee say kum nahin hain!
I take this opportunity to speak today about what should be the shape of an economy that is good for everyone, and especially for all young Indians.
How is the Indian economy doing? GDP is rising. 6.5%/7%. The fastest amongst large economies. However, the size of an economy is not an indicator of its health. The internal shape of the economy determines how healthy it is.
The size and weight of a person is not a good measure of a person’s health. The composition of the weight matters. A body with more fat than muscles is an unhealthy body. Similarly, the GDP of an economy does not determine its health. Its shape matters. In India, corporate profits are increasing. Stock markets are booming. Some people are becoming very rich. But incomes of 90% of Indians are not increasing. The Indian economy is not generating enough decent employment even though GDP is increasing.
Even post-graduates are lining up with thousands of others for jobs as peons and security guards. Or to work as delivery boys for very poor salaries with no job security. Young people are willing to work hard work. What they want is dignified work, and fair wages, and adequate social security. The Indian economy is not providing our youth with enough decent employment.
Working people are the muscles of an economy. Investors and traders in stock markets are not. An economy that is not able to provide enough decent work with sufficient incomes for the masses is not a sustainable economy even if its GDP is increasing. GDP growth without sufficient employment creation within the economy is hollow growth.
The truth is the Indian economy is not doing well. It is not increasing the incomes of people in the lower half of the economic pyramid. If the people are not earning enough, they cannot consume more. If consumption does not increase, businesses will not grow. Therefore, the government should focus on improving the ease of earning and ease of living of the people as its priority, rather than the ease doing business for large companies.
Economists loyal to the NDA government are debating with economists loyal to the UPA government about which government is responsible for the present state of the Indian economy. The truth is that both are, because both have followed the same Western formula of economic growth since 1991. Reduce the size of government. Privatize public services—education, health, water, electricity, banking, insurance. Let companies make more profit in these sectors, and increase GDP, hoping that prosperity will trickle down. This formula has not worked.
Let us compare the progress of the Indian economy since 1990 with China and Vietnam who have followed a socialist path to economic development. Like India, China and Vietnam were also very poor countries in 1990. Whereas GDP per capita in India was $330, in China it was $314. In Vietnam it was only $98.
India has progressed no doubt. By 2023, GDP per capita in India had increased 7.9 times to $2400. But over the same period China’s per capita GDP increased 40.4 times to $12,700, and Vietnam’s increased 44.4 times to $4350. The incomes of citizens of China and Vietnam have increased six times faster than incomes of Indian citizens since 1990. Why? Because, like Singapore which grew remarkably after its independence, Chinese and Vietnam’s economic planners remained committed to their socialist roots when they joined global trade markets. They followed the bottom-up economic philosophy that when the incomes of citizens increase the GDP will increase. Rather than adopt the top-down Western philosophy of increasing profits of corporations first and hoping that incomes lower down will automatically increase. This does not happen.
Learning
Economic progress is a process of learning. People learn new skills they did not have before. Enterprises learn to produce products they did not have the technology for earlier. And policymakers learn how to nurture the growth of a leaning system in which enterprises are learning faster and citizens are also learning faster. Nations progress faster overall when their policymakers learn faster. The evidence is clear. China’s and Vietnam’s leaders have learned faster than India’s about how to grow an economy inclusively. India’s economic planners must shift their attention to policies to increase incomes at the bottom rather than pursuing dreams of increasing GDP. GDP growth is not sustainable if incomes at the bottom do not increase.
The world is always changing. Change is what the wheel at the center of our national flag symbolizes. We must learn and change to make progress. National policymakers must learn and change faster than policymakers in other countries. Enterprise leaders must learn and change faster than leaders of other enterprises to remain competitive. And, you young people must become the fastest and best learners in the world.
Learning is a life-long process. The world is changing all the time. You must keep learning too. Do not limit your learning to what is taught to you in school and college. Be curious about what is happening around you. Take interest in subjects that are not included in your courses. Read beyond your textbooks. Learn on the job. Learn through life.
Gurudeva Tagore who wrote the words of our beautiful national anthem, also wrote Gitanjali for which he won the Nobel Prize. He was the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize. Gurudeva Tagore provided us a vision to guide us. A vision of a world without fear. In which every head is held high. A world not broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls.
The tragedy of the modern world is that our circles of learning have become very small. Engineers learn engineering. Technologists learn technology. Economists learn economics. They don’t learn how societies really work.
Social media binds us into circles of ‘people like us’ whom we interact with. Outside our circles are others also locked into social media cricles of ‘people like them’. Who don’t seem to think like us, and whom we don’t’ like. The tragedy of the world is that people are no longer listening to people not like themselves. The richer people of India live within their own physically and intellectually gated communities. They have lost sight of the realities in which poorer people live beyond the walls of the physical and intellectual spaces of the rich.
Listening
To live together as a democratic and harmonious nation, we must listen to each other. We must learn to listen to people who we think are not like us because they have a different religion, or speak in a different language, or because they dress differently. All of us are human beings. All of us want to live dignified lives, even if we are poorer than others, or born into different castes and religions.
Sadly, our education systems do not teach us how to listen and how to care for others. They teach us how to speak more forcefully, how to put down others, how to look after ourselves, how to compete.
I was the Chancellor of the Central University of Himachal Pradesh when Prof. Furqan Qamar was the Vice Chancellor. You are lucky to have him as your advisor to the Integral University. The campus of the University is in Dharamshala. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was the chief guest in our first convocation. He spoke about the need to reform the Indian education system. He said students are not learning to listen. They are learning to speak. They are not learning the quality of compassion. They are learning to compete.
I wrote a book about Listening. Its title is “Listening for Well-Being: with Conversations with People Not Like Us”. The Dalai Lama kindly wrote the Foreword to my book.
My fellow citizens, India has taught the world the value of yoga. The United Nations has even declared an International Yoga Day to promote yoga around the world. The essence of yoga is the art of breathing. Breathing is a very simple technology. It is the first technology a baby learns when it appears out of its mother’s womb. Breathing is very simple. Yet, good breathing can improve the all-round well-being of our very complex bodies. It can improve our heart and liver functions. It can calm and improve our brains and minds. However, as we grow up, we forget how to breathe well. Yoga teaches us how to breathe again.
Listening also is a very simple technology. Better listening will improve the well-being of society. We must learn to listen to people who we think are not like us, and to care for them. We must also learn to listen to the trees and the birds and to the rivers, and to care for them too. All of us together make up a wonderful system that nurtures all of us. I recommend that we institute a National Listening Day, and that every educational institution has a monthly or weekly listening day. A day on which we practice listening to others.
My fellow citizens, we must build and nurture the integrity of our great nation. I urge our political leaders and policymakers to include the art of listening to others with an open mind as a fundamental requirement for every educational and skill development program.
I conclude by reading to you the poem with which I began my book on Listening for Well-Being.
Listening
It is time to press the pause button;
Put our smartphones on silent.
Shut out the tweets, trolls, and soundbites;
And stop the windmills in our minds.
It is time to listen.
To listen to the whispers in the trees;
To the caring in our hearts.
And most of all, to the voices of
People Not Like Us.
Then we will learn
And find solutions for living together
On our shared Earth.
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Thank you for listening to me.
Jai Hind!