KS
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I beg to disagree with friend CardSharp and with you, in part.
India has certainly underperformed, and the reasons for that have been analysed to death. In short, it was due to an autarkic economic system, controlled and managed centrally through licenses and permits. With the opening up of the economy, first by Manmohan Singh when he was the Finance Minister for Narasimha Rao, and then by a succession of differently-motivated and differently-skilled Finance Ministers, largely from the Congress, ironically a party that I hate, has removed some major impediments. About 35% to 40% of the work is done.
But on the other hand, this kept us out of the clutches of IMF conditionality packages, and stopped us from becoming a South American client state of the Dumbarton Oaks institutions. Even today, our firm and (by and large) independent-minded central bank does a very good job of managing the economy. It is not responsible for inflationary pressures due to a chronic current deficit and the government's resort to printing more money.
I would say that this underperformance brought benefits along with the costs.
It stopped the creation of slave towns in the form of free trade zones. The laws of the land apply everywhere, even in those zones. This is particularly true of the labour laws, which, while they need overhaul and drastic reform, need not - should not lose their teeth.
It stopped the creation of monster projects oriented to 'development' of a kind, of the Three Gorges kind. Our own example is the Narmada project, of course.
It stopped the flood of investment in idiotic and irrelevant areas such as retail, where frankly we really, really don't need one more mall, we really don't need to introduce Walmart to the country.
I could go on but some very healthy filtering has happened, there is a good mix of indigenous and overseas talent and technology, and I feel comforted and safe that we never had a Greenspan clone here.
If, when we open up the economy further, and de-regulate it further, we do not find painfree jobs, we really haven't done much, have we? I would certainly like China's growth, but without the savage measures that sometimes made that growth possible. In a democracy, such methods are not possible, and should not even be discussed.
Though I cannot dis-agree with you here,my contention is India as a nation has certainly under-performed to her true potential , a potential she could have achieved if some visionary leaders were at the helm like a older day counterpart of Lula of Brazil,or atleast an MMS now,which she did not under the Gandhi Family.
With regard to the remark of Kartic Sri, corrupt politicians and red-tape govt babus are emphatically not a concomitant of parliamentary democracy as such.
Regards,
No they are not an essential component of parliamentary democracy as such - perhaps I should have phrased my sentence better - but they are present in varying degress and unfortunately its the superlative degree in India.