Inequality and Social Development Mission

Question: Discuss about the Inequality and Social Development Mission. Answer: Introduction: Social factors of both the countries that affect the economic growth, business environment are population, poverty, gender discrimination, and infrastructure and demand pattern. Population growth rate in India is 1.19% during 2015 and that in Singapore is 1.2% (Data.worldbank.org, 2016). Both India and Singapore are multicultural countries. The population growth curves are showing that the population growth rate in India is decreasing steadily during last ten years. However, the growth rate in Singapore is fluctuating and is higher than India as the Singapore government has tried to increase fertility rate. On the other hand, rising health consciousness has decreased the population growth rate in India; however, India remains the second most populous country. Figure 1: Population growth rate of Singapore (Source: Data.worldbank.org, 2016) Figure 2: Population growth rate of India (Source: Data.worldbank.org, 2014) The reason behind high population in India is influx of refugees from neighbouring countries. High population is the main reason of high rate of poverty in this country. According to World Bank, around 23.6% population remains under abject poverty with $1.25 earning per day. India government has taken several programmes for eradicating poverty such as National Rural employment guarantee act, Indira awaas Yojona, Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar yogona and many others. Government expenditure on poverty alleviation programme has increased overtime. Social discrimination is less in Singapore compared to India. The spending pattern in Singapore is different from that in India. The bottom 20% people in terms of income level spend more than their income. Hence, borrowing rate among them is higher compared to saving rate. India is having higher youth people compared to Singapore. Kohli (2012) cited that the country with higher youth population experiences greater growth rate of the economy. Gender discrimination is less in Singapore compared to India. Singapore ranked 54 in global gender gap report 2015, while India ranked 101 (weforum.org, 2015). Technological factor of India and Singapore India invests a significant portion in education, improvement in science and technology since independence in 1947. Technology has contributed significantly in the economy starting from agriculture, industry to service sector. Telecommunication has improved much in this country to facilitate industrial and service sector. Improvement in biotechnology has increased the productivity of agriculture. Medical science has improved significantly in recent decades due to technological development. The birth rate and death rate have been controlled as an effect of improvement in medical sciences. Automobile engineering, space science, manufacturing technology has increased the scope of employment in domestic countries and decreased the rate of brain drain from India. The most successful event of application of technology in India is Mars Orbiter mission or Mangalayan in 2014 (Srivastava et al., 2015). Technological development has greater contribution in countrys growth and development. Singapore has improved domestic technology since 1970s to bring sophistication in the industries. Singapore government has invested in biomedical science cluster to develop an industrial base in this country. Singapore eventually has become a leading information technology and electronics manufacturing economy in the world. Singapore has followed FDI leveraging model to finance and facilitate the growth high tech industry (Caprotti, 2014). Improvement of technologies in Singapore has contributed to the growth of technology driven local industry. References Caprotti, F. (2014). Critical research on eco-cities? A walk through the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City, China.Cities,36, 10-17. Data.worldbank.org (2016) Population growth (annual %) | Data. (2016 Retrieved 14 November 2016, from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW Kohli, A. (2012). State and redistributive development in India. InGrowth, Inequality and Social Development in India(pp. 194-226). Palgrave Macmillan UK. Srivastava, V. K., Kumar, J., Kulshrestha, S., Kushvah, B. S., Bhaskar, M. K., Somesh, S., ... Ramakrishna, B. N. (2015). Eclipse modeling for the Mars orbiter mission.Advances in Space Research,56(4), 671-679. weforum.org (2015) Rankings. Global Gender Gap Report 2015. Retrieved 14 November 2016, from https://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2015/rankings/