A new liberalisation will energise job markets

If we look back in time, Indian policymakers have primarily focused on promoting investment in factories, often in places far away from where the entrepreneurs resided, via specially designed ‘Backward Areas’ and Special Economic Zone (SEZ) promotion schemes, etc. This continues to the present day. Undoubtedly, production and exports do happen at those centres. But ‘development’, as understood by common citizens, does not. Individual citizens associate development not solely with islands of manufacturing/work areas, but as necessarily accompanied by the widespread availability of comfortable living areas having high-quality law and order, cleanliness and sanitation, roads and traffic conditions, well laid-out markets, parks and gardens, varieties of health, educational, sport and cultural facilities, and allied public places.