MyVoice: Views of our readers 5th March 2025

Jobless growth to widen economic inequality

Renowned economist Jean Drèze from Ranchi University, who has a deep understanding of the Indian economy, made an important observation in his book ‘Sense and Solidarity’. He stated that if a country experiences economic growth but does not create employment alongside it (Jobless Growth), such economic growth will only be sustainable for a short period. According to the Economic Survey, 42.3% of the country’s total population is employed in the agricultural sector, whereas agriculture contributes only 18.2% to the nation’s total GDP. In contrast, the service sector contributes around 55% to the GDP, but it generates only 30% of employment. If such economic disparity continues to rise, it will lead to further concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, thereby widening the gap between the rich and the poor. A better approach would be to enhance the economic productivity of workers engaged in agriculture by increasing mechanisation or by providing them with necessary skill training to transition into the service sector. Unregulated economic growth harms the economy in the long run. Instead, employment-driven economic growth will prove beneficial for the nation’s economy and will also help reduce economic inequality.

Dr. Jitesh Mori, Kutch, Gujarat

Trampling right to free speech

The Supreme Court’s observation that the police are yet to understand the constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right to free speech and expression stresses the need (and urgency) for getting it into their skulls for a marked improvement in the quality of policing in its full sense. The registration of a criminal case against Congress MP Imran Pratapgarhi for penning a poem on the theme of ‘suffering injustice with love’ and posting it on the social media betrayed the Gujarat police’s ignorance of law and their over enthusiasm to act outside its remit. It has not occurred to the police that the poem in question that extols the virtue of ‘suffering injustice with love’ cannot be cited as the reason for their decision to prosecute the parliamentarian-cum-poet. Imran Pratapgarhi is a free citizen of a free country for the police to proceed against him on fictitious or flimsy grounds. Possibly we can also deduce from the charge - promoting enmity between people of different groups on the basis of religion and acting to the detriment of national unity - slapped on Imran Pratapgarhi that the police lodged the FIR against him to please their “political bosses” running the administration. Nevertheless, on perusal of the poem, the country’s top court has found in it nothing objectionable or offensive or anything to, even remotely, hurt religious sentiment or break national unity. The police certainly need sense and sensibility, and not prejudice and predisposition or propensity to persecute, to perform the role they are tasked to in our democracy. Needless to say, a true democracy needs free speech and an atmosphere that is congenial to the exercise of it.

G David Milton, Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu

Farmers owes: None to lend patient hearing

The Punjab CM lividly left the meeting with SKM, the umbrella body of farm unions, midway after listening to 8 out of their 18 demands blaming them of hampering state’s development and disturbing normal life of punjabis through their protests and refusal to stop it. The farmers blamed the CM for not giving them a patient hearing to their demands in full and leaving midway with aggressive attitude based on which they decided to sit on a week-long protest from March 5 onwards which otherwise they might not have. It appears more of a war of human ego than the issue itself. A calm and patient mediator with implementation of directions of SC would help arrive to some logical solution to help public get rid of this prolonged inconvinience faced by them.

RS Narula, Patiala

Online vulgarity

The counsel’s argument that his client You tuber Ranveer Allahbadia,albeit,had no sense of humour but the prohibition would affect his livelihood and that of his 280 employees who work with him on his show cuts no ice at all. Self restraint must be of the nature of a forethought and a preventive measure and not be a repentance proposition. Of late, social media like Facebook is airing reels displaying characters, mind, homely and family characters but showing as indulging in easy virtue exhibiting tantalizing and sensual and erotic scenes, thereby leaving a very harmful influence on the innocent and sensitive adolescent minds and spoiling the age old institution of family and its values. It is time, some sort of censorship machinery is devised to rein the publications in the popular social media.

Seshagiri Row Karry, Manikonda, Hyderabad