Revision summary
Intra-generational equity is fairness among people alive now; it is the core of inclusive growth. Inter-generational equity is fairness toward the unborn; it is the core of sustainable development. Jobless or unequal booms fail the first test even when GDP rises. Aquifer mining, carbon lock-in, and weak environmental clearance fail the second. Policy must raise present capability without running down the ecological and fiscal stock.
Model answer
Introduction
Inclusive growth asks who shares today’s income. Sustainable development asks whether tomorrow’s people still have forests, aquifers, and a liveable climate. Intra-generational equity is fairness among those alive now. Inter-generational equity is fairness between present and future. The two must travel together; growth that lifts a few today by exhausting the commons fails both tests.
Body
Intra-generational equity and inclusive growth
- Intra-generational equity is the claim of the poor, women, Adivasis, persons with disability, and lagging districts to jobs, assets, public services, and voice in the same generation.
- Inclusive growth is not only a high GDP rate. It is growth whose employment elasticity, real wages, and access to health, education, and credit reach those groups.
- India’s live issues are a large informal workforce, regional divergence, and asset inequality. Schemes such as MGNREGA, NFSA, Ayushman Bharat, JAM, and DBT are intra-generational tools when they actually reach the last household.
- If a boom is capital-deep and job-thin, the generation is growing on paper while a majority is excluded — that is an intra-generational failure even with a rising headline.
Inter-generational equity and sustainable development
- Inter-generational equity, in the Brundtland sense, is meeting present needs without stripping the resource base of those not yet born.
- Climate stock, groundwater, soil carbon, biodiversity, and fiscal debt are the ledgers the next cohort inherits. Mining a aquifer for this year’s paddy, or locking in coal without a transition, taxes the future.
- SDGs, the Paris temperature goal, and India’s NDCs are inter-generational promises. They constrain how inclusive growth may use energy and land.
- Weak EIA practice, untreated rivers, and stubble-plus-smog in the north-west are present consumption that the next urban child pays as disease.
How the two perspectives lock
- A coal plant may hire local labour (intra-generational gain) and dump a century of carbon and ash (inter-generational loss). A solar park with land consent and local jobs can serve both.
- Green growth is inclusive only if the poor are not asked to bear conservation without livelihood, and the rich are not allowed to pollute first and compensate never.
- Public investment in human capital and ecological restoration is the rare outlay that raises both present capability and future stock.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD IG[Inclusive growth] --> INTRA[Intra-generational equity] SD[Sustainable development] --> INTER[Inter-generational equity] INTRA --> J[Jobs services voice now] INTER --> F[Climate water soil later] J --> B[Both required] F --> B
Conclusion
Intra-generational equity is inclusive sharing of today’s growth. Inter-generational equity is leaving water, climate, and fiscal room for those after us. Sustainable development is the rule that one must not be bought by sacrificing the other.
Quick related
Students also ask
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It is argued that the strategy of inclusive growth is intended to meet the objectives of inclusiveness and sustainability together. Comment on this statement.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2019 · Q11). View answer →
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Can we grow first and clean later?
That path exported costs onto the next cohort and onto today’s pollution-exposed poor. Inclusive growth that is not green fails both equities.
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Is inter-generational equity only about climate?
No. Groundwater, soil, biodiversity, public debt, and skills stocks are the same problem: what we leave on the books.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
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2025 · Q1 · GS III · 10 marks
Distinguish between the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) with special reference to India. Why is the IHDI considered a better indicator of inclusive growth? -
2024 · Q1 · GS III · 10 marks
Examine the pattern and trend of public expenditure on Social Services in the post-reforms period in India. To what extent this has been in consonance with achieving the objective of inclusive growth?( ). -
2022 · Q2 · GS III · 10 marks
Is inclusive growth possible under market economy ? State the significance of financial inclusion in achieving economic growth in India. -
2019 · Q11 · GS III · 15 marks
It is argued that the strategy of inclusive growth is intended to meet the objectives of inclusiveness and sustainability together. Comment on this statement. -
2017 · Q13 · GS III · 15 marks
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2016 · Q6 · GS III · 12 marks
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More from this topic
Q1 · UPSC Mains 2025 · GS III · 10 marks
Distinguish between the Human Development Index (HDI) and the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) with special reference to India. Why is the IHDI considered a better indicator of inclusive growth?
Inclusive Growth
HDI combines life expectancy, education and GNI per capita into one average. India’s recent HDI is in the medium band, around 0.64, with a rank still in the 130s. IHDI reduces that score for inequality; India has often lost about thirty per cent of HDI to uneven shares. Inclusive growth needs the extra income and services to reach the bottom, which HDI alone can hide. IHDI is therefore the better national test, alongside the multidimensional poverty index.
Q1 · UPSC Mains 2024 · GS III · 10 marks
Examine the pattern and trend of public expenditure on Social Services in the post-reforms period in India. To what extent this has been in consonance with achieving the objective of inclusive growth?( ).
Inclusive Growth
After 1991, social-services spending did not jump at once; it thickened from the mid-2000s with school, health, work and food missions. States spend more on social services than the Union; education is the largest slice and health is smaller. The direction matches inclusive growth: more public money on people, not only on factories. The match is incomplete because learning, public health and out-of-pocket medical costs still exclude many. Inclusive growth is tested by who is reached, not by the size of a budget head alone.
Q2 · UPSC Mains 2022 · GS III · 10 marks
Is inclusive growth possible under market economy ? State the significance of financial inclusion in achieving economic growth in India.
Inclusive Growth
A market economy does not by itself deliver inclusive growth; it rewards those who already hold assets. Inclusion is possible when the State provides public goods and repairs missing credit and insurance markets. India pairs liberalisation with MGNREGA, NFSA 2013 and Direct Benefit Transfer. Financial inclusion (Jan Dhan, JAM, UPI, Mudra, PM-Kisan) channels savings, cuts leakage and supports demand. Significance for growth depends on actual use of accounts and fair credit, not on account-opening numbers alone.
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