Economic development the challenges

The commitment to correcting the fiscal imbalance of past years poses a challenge to development that we could not even have visualised earlier. Fiscal discipline necessarily means that the cause of development must fend for itself. We are forced to look at development in a changed context, since deficit financing which had provided assured resource support to successive Plans cannot do this with the Government's deficit now tied to the compulsions of adjustment as the IMF sees these.

Development will always remain a challenge when human needs are growing and faster than the resources available. Privatisation and the Government's reducing its role in the development process are not going either to reduce the needs or enhance the resources available.

The massive financial irregularities have posed dangers to the development process. With the Government on a correction course, it will have to depend increasingly on the banking sector for support. The needs of development will suffer when the Govern ment is bound to fiscal restraint and banks shift from a social to a commercial orienta tion. This book has taken shape against this backdrop and critically examines different factors and issues involved in economic development of the country,