The Report of the Committee examines many important issues, but the ones that stand out most powerfully are employment and education. In order to ensure access to food and other essentials of a healthy life for all citizens, India faces the challenge of generating 200 million new employment opportunities over the next two decades. This report calls for raising employment generation to the top of the nation’s development agenda and marshalling all available resources to create employment opportunities for all job-seekers. It goes even further by identifying the sectors which offer the greatest potential for job creation as well as critical policy issues that need to be addressed in order to fully tap that potential.

Education is the second main thrust area of this document. Greater coverage and better quality education at all levels from basic literacy to hi-tech science and technology is the essential prerequisite for raising agricultural productivity and industrial quality, spurring growth of India’s budding IT and biotechnology sectors, stimulating growth of manufactured and service exports, improving health and nutrition, domestic stability and quality of governance. The report calls for concerted efforts to abolish illiteracy, achieve 100 per cent enrolment at primary and secondary levels, and broaden access to higher education and vocational training through both traditional and non-traditional delivery systems.

The document also examines issues related to population growth, food production, health, vulnerable sections of the population, transport, communication, energy self-sufficiency, water conservation and air quality, trade investment, peace, security and governance. It gives projections of India in 2020 in business as usual and in the best case scenario in various important sectors and also identifies nodal points of Indian prosperity. Its central conclusion is that India has the opportunity to emerge as one of the world’s leading economies over the next two decades, provided her citizens have the self-confidence, the selfreliance, the will and the determination to realise their individual and collective potentials.