A former principal adviser to the Planning Commission, Pronab Sen writes that since the mid 2000s there has been a shift in terms of trade from manufacturing to agriculture and a redistribution of income from urban to rural areas. HT, 01 February. Data shows that the growth rate of production in rural areas has slowed but income growth has remained the same and there has been a shift in income from land-owners to landless labor due to the NREGA scheme. Rural wages have gone up faster than rural agricultural prices and trade has shifted from groups with relatively high savings to groups with relatively high consumption. Rural people consume more and the landless consume the most which is one reason for the high food prices that has led to the high wage-price spiral. He recommends raising excise duty from 12% to 14% which will reduce fiscal deficit by increasing tax collections and decrease inflation by reducing demand. There is no excise duty on food so his advice is to penalise manufacturing which will hit job creation and waste more money in unproductive handouts. While politicians are howling for lower interest rates to increase demand he wants to increase taxes to lower demand. Genius. If this is the caliber of people in the Planning Commission we can understand why all the 5 year plans have been failures. To find a real solution to India's poverty we should listen to a 14 year Australian girl called Bindi Irwin. She is the daughter of the famous wild life enthusiast, Steve Irwin who was killed when a stingray's tail stabbed straight into his heart in 2006. Bindi submitted a 1000 word essay to Hilary Clinton's e-journal called Go Wild Coming Together for Conservation. In her essay Bindi blamed unchecked growth in human population for global warming and loss of species. She wrote of a friend of hers who is 104 years old and was born at a time when there were no cars, TVs, computers or airplanes. At that time the entire population of earth was 1.5 billion while today it is over 7 billion and growing. She wrote," I believe that most problems in the world today, such as climate change, stem from one immense problem which seems to be the ' elephant in the room ' that no one wants to talk about. That is our ever expanding human population. We are experiencing earth's sixth mass extinction right now." news.com.au. Her essay was returned for her approval with large sections deleted out which has made her furious and determined to fight Ms Clinton's journal. There seems to be a massive mental blind spot when it comes to growing numbers of people. While educated people have few children poor people are growing at reckless speed and there is not enough money or food in the world to feed, educate and give medical care to all. It takes a child to speak the truth. Is anyone listening?
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