higher growth and efficiency but is also seen to have produced these negative traits, he says.

Ahluwalia admits that there has been a slower progress in ensuring inclusion than on accelerating growth, though many parameters on inclusive growth showed much progress. “This contrast (of slower progress in inclusion and accelerating growth) feeds the public perception that rapid growth has only led to a concentration of income and wealth at the upper end,” he says.

The Commission’s deputy chairman also attributes this perception to the media, especially electronic media, which keeps on showing extremes of success at the top end and poverty at the other.“Both extremes are understandably viewed as newsworthy, but in focusing disproportionately on them, the steady improvement in living standards of the very substantial population in the middle, and the associated rise of a growing middle class, receives much less attention than it should,” he says.

Ahluwalia says inequality is normally discussed in terms of inequality of incomes, but in India it can only be measured on the basis of distribution of consumption. However, there was only a modest increase in inequality in urban areas in reforms period and no similar trend is available for rural areas, he says.He says one of the concerns about economic reforms was that the richer states would benefit, while the poorer ones might become poorer, which was not borne out by the facts.

He recognises that inflationary pressures over the past three years is a weak spot of economic performance, for both growth and inclusiveness. "A modest rate of inflation is tolerable, and may even be necessary to accommodate relative price changes that have become unavoidable. However, inflation beyond the tolerable level - usually put at 5 to 6 per cent by the government and 4 to 5 per cent by the central bank - is regressive," he says.