Reforms in the land market are the need of the hour – Bibek Debroy

Pune, 17th August 2024: One of the first markets that needs reform is the land market because vested interests are strong here and most of the state’s corruption happens in the conversion of agricultural land to some other use. So, land reforms are the need of the hour opined Bibek Debroy, Hon’ble Chancellor of Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) and the Chairman – of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. He was delivering a Special Lecture on ‘Economic Reforms in India’ at the Kale Auditorium, Gokhale Institute, Pune.

Dr Ajit Ranade, Vice Chancellor of Gokhale Institute, Sudhir Vaishampayan, Pradeep Apte, and Pradeep Rawat from the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) were present on the occasion. MoU between GIPE & BORI was signed in the presence of Debroy. Under this MoU, the undergraduate students of GIPE will be offered the 2 credits course of Indian knowledge system (IKS) specified in the NEP through the Bharat Vidya Digital Platform of BORI.

Debroy said “Every country gets the government that it deserves and gets the economic reforms they deserve. Because they do not raise their voices for greater economic reforms. Reforms are not win-win, but they are win-lose. In most of the cases, the sectors that lose are the once which are unable to raise the strong voice, or their voice is not strong enough.”

“When we look at the reforms in India, depending on the year about 95-97% growth of GDP is determined by the states. We perpetually scrutinize the Union Budget and Union Finance Commission. However, rarely do we spend time discussing the state Finance commission and the State budget when two-thirds of the expenditure happens at the state level, he added.

“We criticize excessive centralization at the Union level and rightly so on some occasions but most of the priorities like public goods are state subjects, in fact, these are the local body-related subjects. So, when we complain about Union-State relationships, we should also complain about and lobby for greater decentralization and devolution within the state governments because the public goods will be delivered by the local bodies”, Debroy stated.

According to him the reforms of 1991 were easier as these reforms were about the product markets. Since then the political economy get stuck in the factor market including Land, labor, and capital markets.

We perpetually expect the government to do something. In a country, like us, there is a huge gap between the revenues are the expenditures. The government is required to spend about 23% of its GDP on important sectors like infrastructure, health, education, and defense. However, the income of the government through all the direct and indirect taxes is 15% of the GDP. So, something in the system has to give. Reform is about elimination of discretion, and we have found that whenever discretion is less the corruption also reduces.”, Dr Debroy pointed out.

During his speech made on the occasion Sudhir Vaishampayan, Secretary, BORI expressed joy on this MoU and informed the audience that the IKS-related courses offered through its Bharat Vidya Digital Platform are being utilized by 30,000 students from 30 different countries.