Justice Katju calls for India to become a modern industrial powerhouse

Bengaluru: India’s national focus should be on addressing critical issues such as poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, rising prices of essential commodities, and inadequate healthcare systems, said Justice Markandey Katju, former judge of the Supreme Court of India.

Katju was speaking at the Young Achievers Summit organised by the Falcon Group of Institutions in Vasant Nagar.

“We must eliminate these massive socio-economic problems,” Katju emphasised. 

He referenced the Global Hunger Index, pointing out that every second child in India suffers from malnutrition. He also highlighted that approximately 12 million youth enter the job market annually, but fewer than half a million jobs are being created in India’s organised sector. “The rest end up as hawkers, beggars, criminals, vendors, and so on,” Katju explained, underscoring the severity of unemployment in the country.

Katju also drew attention to the poor healthcare infrastructure, despite the presence of numerous top hospitals, which remain inaccessible to the general public.

As a result, the poor are often forced to turn to quacks. He argued that to overcome such challenges, India must transform into a modern industrial powerhouse, similar to China or the USA. According to Katju, India possesses a vast pool of technical talent necessary for this transformation. However, he noted that developed countries would oppose India’s transformation due to the economic consequences it could have on their industries. 

Justice Santosh Hegde also spoke at the event.

“In today’s society, only money and power are respected, nothing else,” Hegde observed. “If you talk about an honest person in the modern world, the response will be that he is useless. He neither takes money nor allows others to take; this is the definition of an honest person today,” Hegde said.