Cooperative Approach for Sustainable Development
The key to a sustainable development lies in a global governance model which is premised on the model of social equity leading to political and social stability. With an increasing globalization of economies the need to evolve a governance model aimed at sustainable development is incomplete without a cooperative approach. The governance ecosystem needs to actively include the civil society, private sector, NGO, Knowledge bank, companies and investors.
The Social Equity approach highlights the multi-stakeholder processes for truly ‘inclusive’ governance and concerted efforts by government, business leaders and the community to ensure equitable growth and sustainable development. Development of a robust global governance model would ensure an environment of social and political stability which would have self reinforcing effect on governance.
The last few centuries of globalization have created a convergent, interconnected and complex socio-economic system. While the acceleration in industrialization, global integration has brought many benefits, it has also created fragility through the underlying production of new kinds of systemic risks.
The recent economic and political turmoil has created a policy lethargy, where the reforms are not being able to provide sustainable solutions for livelihood development and economic sustenance. A majority of the shortcomings can be attributed to the institutional rigidity and its failure to percolate down to the masses which it represents.
To evolve in a continuously dynamic environment, we need to re-integrate our political and economic objectives into the socio-cultural fibre. Political instability is a direct reflection of inequity in our social enterprise, livelihood and sustenance ecosystems. As these factors compound themselves over different geographies and cultures, the global governance failure presents itself as a mismatch between policy direction and community’s aspirations. Financial markets, cyber-security, pandemic diseases, immigration, nuclear safety, climate change are just a handful of issues we are trying to emerge out of globally, and collective action from the grassroots is necessary to build up the momentum towards holistic and integrated solutions.
There is an urgent need to develop a long term economic planning framework supported by firm political environment for stimulating stable growth and fostering better immunity against global economic shocks. The global economy is increasingly witnessing a strong trend towards ‘global value chains’. Although studies is categorize India as a medium low risk country with respect to the levels of risk, improvement and consistency in socio-political stability is critical to instil a high level of confidence necessary for gaining international cooperation.
India needs to rapidly create infrastructure and generate employment to support its burgeoning population. Foreign investments offer a window to sustain the government’s endeavors to bolster socio-economic development. As per World Bank, the flow of Foreign Direct Investments is governed by the sociopolitical stability of a nation. We need to build investor confidence, both domestic and foreign, through policy stability.
Policy stability in an economy reflects transparency and accountability in corporate investment and government allocations. Credible policy commitments will encourage and reassure the private sector that their investments will not be reversed under any pressure. India must continuously try to build ü resilience within the economy by pushing development of strategic sectors focusing on livelihood creation and enterprise development at the micro level. Manufacturing, tourism, real estate and infrastructure are high potential sectors that can lead to a multiplier effect while boosting domestic demand as a bulwark against global economic downturns.
Multi-stakeholder processes to initiate inclusive governance and concerted efforts by government, business leaders and community are critical to ensure equitable growth and sustainable development. Even as India addresses global governance, it is necessary at this juncture to address our own political and social system. Without, integrating business, industry and ecosystems, the overall inclusive transformation of the country will be eluding us. Strategic dialogues combined with research, informal interaction of industry leaders with their peers from government will be a much better enabler for innovative ideas and proposals to be acted upon by building trust and identifying delivery gaps.