Creative education, health to play big role for future economies: Basu

Speaking at eighth Pravin Visaria Memorial Public Lecture, Basu stated that for countries like India to emerge as a winner going forward, focusing on creative education and health sectors will be key

Even as global economies face changes led by digital revolution and look to move into the next phase, renowned economist Kaushik Basu believes creative education and health sectors will play a big role for countries emerging as winners in future.

Speaking at the eighth Pravin Visaria Memorial Public Lecture held by the Gujarat Institute of Development Research (GIDR), Basu stated that for countries like India to emerge as a winner going forward, focusing on creative education and health sectors will be the key.

"As we are moving into the next phase, it will be a challenge for different countries. There will be new winners and new losers. You take any country including India, some people will say it is a sure winner and some will say it is a sure loser. The truth is somewhere in between as always. When you analyse carefully, India is doing well in some ways and bad in other ways... I believe that there are two sectors that are going to be dominant in the world and countries that take up positions in them will be the big players. These are creative education and health sectors," said Basu, the former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University.

"Creative education because menial labour is going to be taken over so those you nurture creative education will be on the forefront. Health sector because a large part of the GDP is going to be health and scope for growth is huge. These two sectors are going to play a big role," Basu further stated in his lecture titled 'The Changing Nature of the Global Economy and Labour Markets: What May the Future Hold' .

Quoting the latest World Bank data, Basu stated that while India was the fastest growing country in terms of GDP growth in 2021 at 8.7 per cent, for the two years of 2020-21 India was neither high nor low at a growth rate of 0.8 per cent. "We are at a juncture where we have to think in terms of the creative process going forward," said Basu on lessons India could learn from historical examples like that of Argentina and the US to invest in education.

Citing Argentina's examples, Basu stated that the South American country was touted to become the richest in the 1920s but by the 1930s it began to tumble due to "hyper nationalism" and investment in education by the US that helped the latter overtake Argentina.

Similarly, in the current era South Korea's success due to investment in education is also evident. "Investment in creative education in South Korea is among the world's best. In 2019, the number of patents for one million population was 3319 in South Korea, making it the world leader and the next is Japan with 1943 patents per one million population. School teachers in South Korea earn like rock stars...In terms of per capita, South Korea is going to overtake Japan which would have been unthinkable 20-30 years ago," Basu further stated in his argument on investment in creative education and health.

The renowned economist maintained that India had the potential to attract students from around the world and become a global hub of education even as research could play a major role for the country.

Meanwhile, talking about workers' share of income in GDP falling across countries like Australia, EU, Canada, Japan and the US, Basu called for a way to think of workers' share in income being retained even if their jobs are replaced by machines.

Calling globalisation a "natural process" like gravity, Basu argued against talks of 'de-globalisation' while stating that the digital revolution was now linking workers and consumers in different geographies, of which India could take great advantage.