Dateline Bombay

Inclusive. Remember this word, you will be hearing it many times in coming months. From all sorts of folks, politicians to business leaders. Because suddenly realisation is drawing that the last couple of years of runaway growth and prosperity has not resulted in inclusive growth. Rather only in a few getting wealthier.

Even China gets worried about such things so presumably we should be too. That we not only do not have inclusive growth but we have runaway inflation from rising prices of goods and services. I now understand that finance minister P Chidambaram and his team have been furiously reworking their Union Budget 2007 proposals so as to ensure that there are more specific steps to fight inflation.

And yet I wonder why we did not see it coming. We all got caught in the great India Shining mirage three years ago and vowed that we would always watch out for such signals. And yet we've had a near encore. Forget wheat prices and onion prices. Real estate prices have doubled in ma…

How often do you get stuck in a traffic jam ? Almost everyday right. Now, here is a car on the lane next to you. Both of you are headed in the same direction and have been immobile for a while. So you and the driver of that car get talking. You discuss various things, mostly it will be to do with the state of traffic itself.

Soon, the other line starts moving and the driver in the other car waves his goodbyes and gets going. You wave your goodbye and smile at him. You are actually happy for him. Because you know that soon you will be going too. Time passes and you get impatient. Actually you are not moving. On the contrary there is no change in your position at all. Looks like your neighbour's line was the only line to benefit. Your happiness turns to anger. You are upset. You now curse the other guy.

This, as Nobel Prize laureate Dr Amartya Sen described it this evening in Mumbai, is the tunnel effect. I hope I got his example right - if not, I shall modify. The ocassion was a smal…