India and China: 'Myths' of economic growth
The twin stories of India and China are the most dramatic in the world economy. In 1820, the two countries contributed to nearly half of the world's income. In 1950, their share was less than a tenth; and currently the two contribute to a fifth. By 2025, their share of world income will be a third, according to projections.
China, of course, hogs most of the glory. India was ahead of China in 1870 as well as in the 1970s in terms of per capita income levels at international prices. But since 1990, China has surged ahead of India - China's per capita income growth in the past two decades has been at least double the rate that of India.
Both remain the world's fastest growing big economies. The conventional wisdom is that decades of socialist controls and red tape stifled enterprise in both countries. Market reforms and globalisation helped uncork the genie and unleashed massive entrepreneurial energies. This, in turn, led to a decline in poverty and increase in economic growth. Commentators have called this the unshackling of "caged tigers", among other things. Others have waxed eloquent on the two giants spawning "three billion capitalists", redefining the next stage of globalisation.
Is that really the case? In a provocative and brilliantly argued new book, one of India's leading economists Pranab Bardhan argues that a lot of "hype and oversimplification" has distorted recent accounts of the two economies. Mr Bardhan, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, mines critical data and offers incisive analysis to offer a more nuanced picture.
The truth, as he shows, is much more sobering than the hype.
In Awakening Giants, Feet of Clay: Assessing the Economic rise of China and India, Mr Bardhan says it is not clear whether economic reforms are mainly responsible for the recent high growth in India.
Reforms have made the country's corporate sector more vibrant and competitive. But, he says, most of the Indian economy is not in the corporate sector, which absorbs only 6% of India's labour force. The fast growing info-tech sector - India's pride- employs less than 1% of India's workforce. Services - financial business services and telecommunications where reforms may have made a significant impact - constitute only about a quarter of the total service sector output. "It is yet to be empirically and convincingly demonstrated how the small corporate sector benefiting from reforms pulled up a vast informal sector," says Mr Bardhan.
Globalisation's impact on economies has been a divisive issue with economists. Some say it sharpened inequities and made the poor poorer; others believe it has pulled lots of people out of poverty.
Mr Bardhan isn't very sure about either.
He cites India's national household data, which suggests that poverty did not decline sharply in 1993-2005, when India experienced extensive opening up of its economy. Social indicators like child health remained - and remain - abysmally poor. At the same time, the growth rate in agriculture, where most of the poor work, has declined somewhat in the past decade. This is largely because of the decline of public investment in farm infrastructure and has nothing to do with globalisation, argues the economist.
Globalisation also does not appear to have helped in boosting India's social development indicators, Mr Bardhan suggests. How else can one explain that Gujarat, the country's richest, high-growth, reform-friendly state, has a higher percentage of underweight children than sub-Saharan Africa?
Mr Bardhan suggests China's stunning growth rates (9% on an average) in the early years of liberalisation - 1978 to 1993 - happened because of domestic factors - farms reforms, distribution of land cultivation rights - which raised rural incomes.
Also, contrary to popular perception, China's growth has not been primarily export driven, the book argues. Mr Bardhan shows how domestic investment and consumption have been the main drivers of China's growth. No doubt globalisation and economic reforms have trigged off economic growth but, as Mr Bardhan argues, most of us may have overstated their importance.
© 2012~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~12~RS~)
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Very interesting!
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I have not read Bardhan's book but find the selective excerpts on the "services" sector , here, prejudiced.
We have atlest 3 IT services company in India (IBM, Infosys, TCS )that employ more than 1 lakh people each, something unthinkable in the pre-liberalisation era. The author says IT sector employs only 1% labour force making it seem like a non-entity without informing the readers that majority of India's labour force is in the farm & also that the per-capita productivity in IT sector is atleast 50 times more than that in the farm sector.
The farm sector suffers from various ailments of which uncertainty of the monsoon & low-interest finance are the biggest. But other acute problems like small land-holding, poor linkage to consumer market,lack of contract farming system , lack of high-yield-giving seeds, lack of co-operative storage facilities etc, make it an unproductive sector on which liberalisation has neglibile effects.
The author is also silent about the unhindered explosive growth of a huge parasitic farm distribution system that thrive on exploiting the farmers at one end of the spectrum & the consumers at the other end by buying at ridiculously low price, hoarding & then selling at a ridiculously high price without adding commensurate economic value besides some amount of transporation & stocking.
Its the distribution system that needs public & private investment in modernisation & technology and thereby to free it from the shackles of a medieval trading infrastructure, corrupt babus & other useless middlemen.
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It is interesting that almost all of the coverage of India (and China too) is around their great growth story.
Rarely does one come across a point of view where the other side of India is reported on. The recent acceptance by the government that about 38% of the population is still around the poverty line gets only a brief mention whereas economic theories that are not so relevant as quoted in this article are all over the place. And this is just one of the sides of the the 'great growth'.
While all of this is great for India....there needs to be a equal focus on the segments of society that do not get to participate in the growth story. We are at a threshold where unabashed capitalism will result in a US style society where the poor for example cannot afford health insurance. The risk is obviously higher for us because unlike the US we boast of a population of 1.2 billion as compared to 300 odd million.
It would be good to get in touch with Economists who look at the reality rather than hide behind theories or data analysis - both for the good that's happening as well as the areas that are being missed out.
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Is it correct to assume that a theory is only as good as it is in practice ? Economists complain that no one takes them seriously, people complain that these so called theories are no good at all. One noted economist touts the literacy angle which is torn to pieces by others citing real life examples. In all probability, economics and study of human society will forever remain confined to empirical guesstimation. Neither will it be pragmatic to wish away corruption, nor to tout utopian goals for human society. Not for another 100 years at least. I hope I'm wrong.
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Interesting post. But does the author take into account the effect of the booming corporate sector on government revenues?
The employment guarantee act(NREGA) which has a budget of more than 40,000 crores ($9 billions approx.) would have been impossible had it not been for the stupendous growth in corporate tax,customs and excise collections over the last decade.
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Indian growth story is vastly overstated by corporate controlled media and government propaganda. In almmsot every index of social and human development (as per UN and many other international organizations), Indian’s ranking has not developed much, if not slipping down. Acccording to ex-cabinet minister Mani Shankar Iyer, only 0.5% of population of India is getting affected by this recent economic development. And the cost of the development is huge on general population. It will be very clear if we consider massive environmental degradation; lack of urban planning with unmatched growth in cities, semi-urban and rural infrastructure is almost non-existant, lack of transparency in governance, gradual collaps of judiciary, deteriorating public health, fast declining quality of education and research etc. Acccording to Bengal CM Buddhadev Bhattacharaya there are about 5 lakhhs people only in south Bengal who have nothing. Here nothing means- NOTHING (no food for two meals per day, no savings, no income/job, no education, no state benefit either). The total number of people in whole India that is involved in IT revolution is not more than 5-7 lakhs. Unlike China, India’s economic liberelization was not a well planned policy decision but an inevitable consiquence of our utter failure to manage our economy since independence. Even now, projects like NREGS (also known as NREGP), right for food, right for education etc will waste more national wealth than creating and sustaining human resource or benefit our economy. We are habituated to have such projects more for vote bank politics than for national development. On toop of that corporate governance in India is almost non-existant. In reality, all our industrial growth is NOT based on invenstion or innovation but on routine mentainence job (as in IT) or environmentally polluting and/or ethically/legally undeserving for developed countries (for so many different reasosn). One can get a glimps from the post and comments in Sautik’s blog “A Commonwealth shame?”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/03/a_commonwealth_shame.html and “India's rights revolution”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/04/indias_rights_revolution.html
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As per a recent report preparation I came across a data that shows about 18% of Indian agricultural labor force has been made redundant (without having ANY alternative job) due to recent industrialization. If we consider that 65% of Indian population (total 1.2 billion) still depends on agriculture then we can have an idea on the number of people who were displaced. That is bound to have social impact, as we see in the rise of extremist violence in some pretext or other. In reality, India does not have almost any long term policy for practically anything of national importance. Be it Kashmir or talking to Pakistan or administrative reform or corporate governance or judicial reform, population control, or transparency in governance, or improving our education and research quality etc. Everything seems to be on ad-hoc basis. The only thing our political masters are interested is- new schemes that will allow them to pass the election time (populist programs like NREGS, or “right to food” type bills) and defense preparedness (as huge money are at stake to grab).
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Quote : "Market reforms and globalisation helped uncork the genie and unleashed massive entrepreneurial energies" : i really liked this statement :)
This is somewhat true for the IT sector . More than ever , people are getting involved in software product startups engaging in high end software development . A fair share of these are finding success , too .
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A big factor is going to be how India Inc handles its own HR , the population . We need more quality , and check in quantity increase .
So here is another big responsibility : empowering the rural people , the most of India's populace .
We need to remove the unnecessary middlemen from everywhere .
Instead of turning the convinient blind eye towards problems , i think India can grow well by taking the issues and problems on . The number one reason in that is going to to be people's awareness and righteous activism . The article on BBC which talked about Indian children teaching themselves with computers ... ideas like these will make it work .
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India and China have poor economic growth. The published numbers are false and represent the production of inferior commodities. Their tech industries are stagnant. Congress should authorize the sale of sophisticated electronics to the countries.
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India's people need to think well in the long term , and outthink the government when especially many political parties openly divide people based on outdated feel good factors such as religion or ethnicity . This is easier said than done . But the future can unite all Indians , and this sense of future needs to be in everyone . We will not welcome separatist and communist forces here .
By numbers we have the world's largest democracy , but we need a lot of awareness among citizens and empowerment of poor people to make it one of the world's better democracies .
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I was fortunate enough to attend the marathon 2 part LSE lecture that Pranab Bardhan gave in May. Pranab makes very interesting points with reference to seemingly esoteric data. I'm not sure that the way Pranab extrapolates are entirely valid, and his approach (and book) does seem hyper-critical of China in psuedo-nationalistic way.
However his conclusions and inferences with reference to India seem valid and are collaborated by the respected Palagummi Sainath. Sainath goes futher Bardhan and points to the illusionary bunkem behind 'incredible' India and points to the huge rise in registered farmer sucicides (greater than 8 million) that have occured with India's liberalising economic reforms in the early 90s.
Whereas China has managed to lift 300 million out of poverty (a feat unparalelled anywhere in history), India has a comensurate number of souls in absolute poverty (this despite India gerrymandering its definition of poverty to 24 cents a day).
Those in India who have benifitted from double digit growth have been the wealthy, the agarian poor have yet to see the fruits of economic growth - and in real terms the wealth of the rural majority is actually decreasing.
The rising Gini coefficient is perhaps the most distressing aspect of modern India, in that the land which boasts the 4th greatest number of Billionares, is the most inequal of all BRIC countries.
I welcome Bardham's book (even the Tub-thumping parts) as it highlights a truth that most economic analysis of India tend to neglect, i.e. that of the prolific human misery in India.
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Very interesting article but it is biased on the views of Mr Bardhan. dont fully agree with the saying that Chinas growth has not been driven by exports.China has passed through massive transformation from an economy based on agriculture and to one based on manufacturing and services, from one with high fertility and low longevity. This vast movement of transformation started on a very simple principle frequently stated by Deng Xioaping: “Poverty is not socialism”. So after 1980 prosperity was the new face of the socialism.
China enjoyed the advantages of backwardness.Agriculture’s surplus labour was tapped and this resulted in uninterrupted growth for almost two decades without facing wage pressures. The World Bank estimates that by 2020 China could be the world second largest exporter and importer and its consumers may have a purchasing power larger than all of Europe’s.
Today in India after opening up of economic reforms in the year 1991 our country has certainly grown steadily foreign investments have come in various sectors and there has been a good growth in the standard of living, per capital income and Gross Domestic Product.However, much remains to be done the government intrudes where it need not,like managing Public Sectors Units which most of them are ill managed and sick, but it is failing to manage the basic services that it should,
like decent roads, a stable power distribution infrastructure, and quality primary education. So much has to be done so as to keep pace with the way China is progressing.
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It is true that the western media has been a bit 'hyper' about India's economic growth in recent years - the reason for their joy is that they see growth of a vibrant middle class (read consumer market) based on private capital. That does not mean there has been enough development in social capital (as is evident from the reports on poverty) or the infrastructure. India has miles to go before we can really be compared to what China has achieved. Now, the question on whether it is due to the liberalisation that started in the 90s; well, let us compare the indices between 1971-1990 against 1991-2010. I imagine the scale will tilt in favor of post 90s.
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In Awakening Giants attention is given to the rise of India and China as global powers. By 2025 (it is estimated) that China and India will contribute a combined @ 30 percent of world income.
Of course this rise in world income will bring economic gain but also political & military advantages to which the United States will have sewrious trouble adjusting.
I don’t know what is so impressive about becoming a “super-producer” or a super-power if it's only in the name. As in the United States, in India and China there are pockets of elitist wealthy and pockets of abject poverty; as long as this remains the case, I cannot consider either country “advanced” economically, but simply falling into the same capitalist traps as the United States. Therefore, what is most important for India and China is to engage in domestic reforms - ways of raising the economic boat for the entire populations.
India has fallen into a “service-type” revolution; it receives a lot of outsourcing (or should I say insourcing), but in the long run I cannot see India truly developing into a solid, fairly independent economy until and unless it gets into manufacturing. Manufacturing is necessary to create jobs for the poor. However, to give credit where credit is due there are now occuring manufacturing jobs in parts of S & W India e.g. Tamil Nadu. Unfortunately this is not yet happening uniformly throughout the country.
India is so big, too big! I’ve often thought that she would fair better if she released Kashmir (by referendum) so that she could concentrate more of her resources on developing India and less on trying to hang onto a people that does not want to be part of India. Too much money and resources are being wasted on the Kashmir duspute.
As for China, China will easily become the manufacturing giant of the world. After all, when the United States did not like messy, dirty manufacturing jobs sitting in the back gardens of the elitest establishment, it outsourced these jobs to China. China has benefitted. Also, China is ingaged in much activity in the developing world where she literally gives far more than she takes e.g. building infrastruicture. This bilateral and mutual respect can only stand China in good stead.
Conclusion: I don't think the growth of China or India are myths of economic growth. I think the growth is real. It just needs some smart and innovative tweeking.
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Many misconceptions in the posts. What is touted as the "Indian IT sector" comprises mostly of call centers which is not necessarily a good thing horrible accents!!). The only advantage India has is its HUGE population. It makes sense to do business in India. However, what must not be overlooked (something that the western media also fails to report) are the insurgencies in Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Kashmir and possible even Punjab. That is a problem waiting to happen. Also, one monsoon too late and there will be 400-500 million hungry mouths.
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#17: I am extremely sorry to point out your ignorance publically, but looking down upon call centres is a very foolish approach, atleast from an Indian's perspective. I say this for the following reasons:
1. If you have had an experience working in the western world, you will realize the financial INFEASIBLILITY of interactive services involving a customized or personalized approach. A stereotype can be Mobile or Online banking and Purchase firms, but it also includes Disaster Management, Immergency response and numerous Knowledge Processing Services.
2. Call centres in India employ youths from a Low-Medium Income source group primarily thereby acting as a flux of capital(money) distribution in this segment.
3. Most services touch youth groups from Tier 2 and 3 Indian cities, thereby providing a source of employment in these areas. These services are robust have a huge market scope therefore are a longterm source of gainfull employment.
4. The "accent" that you look down upon, is nothing more than an acquired salient feature towards customized services. It has no significance what so ever in influencing the culture or traditional priorities of the employees.
All this from me .. and I have nothing to do with call centres ;)
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"""India and China: 'Myths' of economic growth"""
I think Soutik's article is quite moving along different lines to arrive in the "myth" outcome. Let me see upon them:
"""In 1820, the two countries contributed to nearly half of the world's income."""
That did not mean they were really richer and certainly not more powerful which is the only real measurement (economic measurements are small letter). To state it otherwise, if China and India were really richer did their combined possessions in gold reach half that of a small island like Britain? Could both of them fight off a small nation like Britain? No. They were subject to the rule of the British. Terribly subject to it.
The fact that they contributed to more than 50% of the world's income was down only to the fact that the 80% of income was still agriculturally based (as the industrial revolution had only started some 30 years and had not yet rendered what it would render by the end of the 19th century). Naturally the huge expanses of the extremely fertile lands of China and India provided for most of the world's income. Only that this went first in the pockets of the powerful ones and these were the Eurpoeans, primarily the British. So saying the above phrase is merely creating impressions.
"""In 1950, their share was less than a tenth;"""
Yes. Because 1950 is more than 150 of industrialisation. Not to add that agricultural production fivefolded in industrial nations brining the prices down and thus China and India still with old-style production systems could not make then the difference.
"""and currently the two contribute to a fifth."""
We are talking about the world, not just a small locality! Arriving from no10 to no5 is arealdy huge!
"""By 2025, their share of world income will be a third, according to projections."""
Even more huge!
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I agree with 'abc' on one point - that of India being one missed monsoon from economic and social disaster.
It strikes me as remarkable that after the near miss that Northern India suffered in 2009 (Monsoon rains diminshed by 34%) that vital reforms were not made in agraian production. It is scandalous that still a quarter of all food stuffs produced by Punjab and Haryana are left to rot in the open because of a lack of silo capacity and refridgeration units.
The spike in food inflation and the discontinuation of petrol subsidy has led to food stuff prices increasing by 42%. Again the poor masses are suffering.
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at a time when the global media and the governments across the spectrum are debating day and night about the growing asian economic giants, this article comes us as a reminder of the conventional wisdom and the hidden nuances. several truths of this kind are yet to come !
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I agree with Mr Jai on his comments.
India is getting by just on the mere basis of its masses. India IT sector keeps bragging about its great achievement but what kind of innovation have they demonstrated in the IT arena. We just fine tune stuff that were invented and innovated in the US. We make a big deal of nothing. Bill Gates can also do his charitable work unanimously. What are the charitable contributions from Ambanis and co. If they do not build their Billion Dollar homes India's poverty can be eradicated. Let them give good portion of their wealth.
We just feel elated for small achievements.
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The Indian model of business (or any other area, including education and research) merely exploits the limitations of our law and order, inability of our government to protect its own citizens and above all the culture of corruption and sycophancy. Most of that arises from our feudal social structure (both for common citizens, industrialists and politicians). That mainly evolved from past history of repeated foreign invasion and rule.
Now we are not encouraged and sometimes allowed to do, to implement, something new and/or ethical. Mainly those people become “successful” in that setup who can exploit the existing loopholes of the system (than correcting it). This is true for our business, industry (including IT), politics, education and research, even NGO operations.
For the same reason many “successful” Indian industrialists can never make any impact on global business in that area. That’s why the success of huge industrial giants like Reliance or Birla group is mainly limited to third world countries like India and Africa where law and order, public awareness and governance is very poor. The ONLY Indian company that has made its mark in international business is TATA group. We all know how Tata’s corporate culture, how mentality or rattan Tata is different from any typical Lala-type business houses like Reliance or Birla.
The development in India is generating more social disparity as a “drag force” that can not be overcome by economic prosperity of a small section of the population. You surely can buy a great car but will not have a great road to drive that; you can buy a great apartment but you need to keep its windows almost always closed. You can never roam in a forest (anti-social/terrorist infested); you can never enjoy fishing or a boat ride through the river (fully polluted and smelly). Natural resources are disappearing at a very alarming rate. It will be more frustrating if you try to do something to improve the situation there. Then you/your family/parents will be marginalized and/or even threatened. In short, economic prosperity will not lead to have a better quality of life due to social disparity in India. It's worth mentioning that this is not so surprising that young Indians are now too much obsessed with money, only money and that’s the main reason they are the most optimistic people in the world, as per Forbes survey (http://www.forbes.com/2007/09/22/india-happiness-survey-face-cx_rd_0921autofacescan02.html). It says, “But even though Indians are the happiest, the numbers of those satisfied aren’t very high. In Europe, most young people seek a good living environment above all and work-related aspects in life are relatively less important. But the priorities of Indian youth and young people in other “new economies” are different--for them, work, a good career and a position with high status are what matters”.
Many world leaders (e.g ex-British PM Tony Blair) have started wondering if we need to change the way we evaluate “development” of a country and success of its policy makers. According to that group, economic parameters MUST not be the sole (or even, main) criteria to judge a country and efficacy of its government. Many people, including many eminent economists are now actively investigation issues like "happiness index" and "happiness quotient". One can check: Science of happiness (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4783836.stm) and Politics of happiness (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4809828.stm) series of articles in BBC.
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I love these type of articles which are based on selective data from here and there, a southik speciality anyway.
As for India all I can say is I have grown up in past 30 yrs and I have seen my family going from very ordinary financial position to very good one. Similarly I have seen lot of my friends who didnt belong to wealthy families progress. Not only is this reflected in IT but also in banking positions, consulting positions, auto positions, consumer good manufacturing etc.
Who cares what these authors say for selling their books, you gotta believe whats around you.
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@ abc : What ??? You are referring to as IT is ITES : IT Enabled Services . And people from the states you mentioned are coming to work in big cities where this is done , for both IT and ITES . Your ignorance exposes your unscientific bias against India .
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@ Chanmett : Do you think our Fortune magazine listed customers are morons to give us business ? The problem with prejudice is , it renders people blind to their own intelligent mind capable of analyzing stuff .
Innovation is happening in India , both by :-
1 . the new and welcome trend of Indian product startups , as well as
2 . the continued success of MNC's like Citrix , NetApps , Google , Amazon , Yahoo in doing part of their Research and Development work here .
i am not stating , like before , that IT alone will propel India , but too many people , who do not have an idea what it takes to deliver value in this field , start talking like overnight experts in everything .
It is always easier to find problems , but even more important to verify and then solve them .
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The article brings out two sides or rather two faces of India, one face shows India's success story and the other shows it abject poverty. On 13th July, BBC published an article titled "More poor" in India than Africa.This just goes to show that Professor Pranab is right about India's economy, the disparities between the Urban "rich" and the rural poor cannot go unnoticed.This brings me to another question, can India truly say it is far ahead of most African countries in terms of development.I pose this question because, Africa is said habour the most poorest economies, yet if you look at most statistics on the ground from sources like the global competitive report, UNDP report,they show that Most African countires are ahead in aspects such as literacy rate, GDP,etc,etc.Most African countries seem to be way ahead of India. Even public service deliveries in Africa like health care, education etc is more accessible than in India. By the way I am an African student studying in India and so I have seen what is prevailing on the ground in both continents!
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The “hunger index” of India is worse than even Pakistan in recently published report (2007) (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/hunger-index-pakistan-china-better-off/228358/ ). A recent (2008) BBC article citing International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) report RANKS INDIA AT 66 OUT 88 COUNTRIES, SO FAR HUNGER IS CONCERNED (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7669152.stm ). That report also points out that economic prosperity of a state in India does not always translate to a better, overall situation for common people. HIGHLY PROSPEROUS STATES LIKE GUJARAT (WITH INDIA’S “MOST SUCCESSFUL” INDUSTRIAL HOUSE, RELIANCE AND MOST INDUSTRIALIZED STATE) AND KARNATAKA (THAT HOUSES INDIAN SILICONE-VALLEY, BANGALORE) ARE WORSE IN HUNGER INDEX AS COMPARED TO LESS DEVELOPED STATES LIKE ASSAM (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7669152.stm ). India is slipping down in that key index as compared to its own position in 1990, despite a spectacular growth in GDP. Now India has the second fastest growing economy in the world and third largest in Asia. But, like many other social and environmental issues, the target fixed by India itself to reduce hunger, has fallen far behind. THE “CORRUPTION INDEX” FOR INDIA IS DETERIORATING FURTHER (http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table , http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-slips-in-corruption-index/365017/ ). INDIA NOW HAS THE HIGHEST DEATH DUE TO DIARRHOEA IN THE WORLD (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/india-way-behind-in-sanitation-look-at-diarrhoea-deaths-undp-report/16341/ ). NEARLY TWO-THIRD OF INDIA HAS NO ACCESS TO SANITATION even today. IN TERMS OF MALNUTRITION AMONG CHILDREN, INDIA TODAY FOUND ITSELF RANKED WITH ETHIOPIA (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060504/asp/nation/story_6179729.asp ). INDIA IS NOW HOME FOR ONE THIRD OF THE WORLD’S 146 MILLION UNDERNOURISHED CHILDREN ACCORDING TO A RECENT UNICEF REPORT. As expected, INDIA IS WIDELY OFF TRACK OF THE CHILD MORTALITY TARGET as well (http://www.telegraphindia.com/1051213/asp/opinion/story_5592027.asp ). JUDICIARY IS AS GOOD AS NON-FUNCTIONAL (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7883750.stm ).
With a literacy rate (percentage of adults who can read and write) of 65%, INDIA COMPARES POORLY TO NOT JUST INDUSTRIALISED NATIONS BUT ALSO SEVERAL MUCH-POORER ECONOMIES, such as Vietnam (90% literacy), Zambia (80%), Tanzania (77%), and Cambodia (70%)" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4051353.stm). My recent experience with many graduate students form some high profile Indian institutes/universities indicate that the trend to emphasize on database type knowledge, quiz type information and fascination with techniques (not science as such) are still highly prevalent. No wonder INDIA IS AMONG THE LEAST INNOVATIVE NATIONS IN THE WORLD (http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080070798&ch=11/1/2008%2011:56:00%20AM). QUALITY OF INDIAN SCIENCE EDUCATION AND RESEARCH IS GOING DOWN AT AN ALARMING RATE since 1980s, despite of huge increase in funding (Balaram, P (2002): Science in India- Signs of Stagnation. Current Science 82, 193-194).
THE ONLY STATE WHICH COMES NEAR GUJARAT IN TERMS OF THE LOW QUALITY OF TEACHERS IS KARNATAKA, another highly prosperous state in India, with about three-fourths of its teachers having studied only up to the higher secondary level" (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Only_21_teachers_in_Bihar_are_Class_X_pass/articleshow/2615791.cms ). Such data also implied that prosperity of few people (that inflate the macro level data like GDP, par capita income) does not mean prosperity for common people (or the country as a whole). THE SAME “PROSPEROUS” STATES LIKE GUJARAT AND KARNATAKA ALSO DO WORSE AS COMPARED TO “LEAST DEVELOPED” STATES LIKE ASSAM IN TERM OF HUNGER AND SOCIAL WELL BEING (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7669152.stm ). Such facts imply that “trickle down” effect of “development” or “prosperity” as many seem to justify, can never be translated to the common people of the country unless strict oversight and transparency in governance is present. This is true for any country, be it USA or India. And that is grossly missing from Indian government and also among common Indians (who should force our policy makers to do its duties). We need to remember that the first thing needed to solve a problem is to acknowledge the problem in the first place. That awareness is vastly absent among many Indians, mainly among those (rural or urban) who are benefitted by this post-91 economic and even among many so-called educated people. They like to believe that their “success” stories reflect majority Indians, which is far from truth. There is no doubt that few people are benefitted but that is only a fraction of our population. If you play cricket with an asking rate 8 per over to win and if you score 6 per over, then you can highlight that “good” scoring rate and feel great about it but may loose the game as asking rate will climb higher as the game nears end.
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“A new report has confirmed what many Indians have long suspected - their country's bureaucratic system is one of the most stifling in the world.” : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10227680. It also says, “Starting a business in India is incredibly hard, and enforcing contracts can be next to impossible”. Fresh students/people with new scientific/technical ideas to develop new product and/or service hardly get proper groooming and support from our universities and from anywhere in India. Either they have to go out of the country and use that idea to flourish. That’s one of the major reasons why enterprenureship is limited almost entirely among people from already established rich and powerful families (who knows how to nevigate the corrupt system in India). Only few people did that in a totallly non-existing business oppportunity in IT, mainly because existing industrial houses were not in that field and they were ignorant about its future prospect. That allowed those start-up businesses to flourish. Inability of majority of Indian businessmen and industrialists to evaluate and/or develop new technology or idea in preventing them to become a major player in that area. We only do good with existing product/technmology (clinical trial, generic drug production, usuing existing technology in IT (like C++, JAVA etc) to solve customer specific problems so on. IT DOES LEAD TO SHORT TERM PROSPERITY BUT WE TEND TO LOOSE IN A BIG WAY IN THE LONG RUN.
Over dependencce on cheap, highly exploitable labor force, cheap raw materials, almost no ethical or legal or environnmental obligations (largely on which Indian industrial “succcess” depends) are not the best options to develop a country in the long run. Many countries can offfer that. And we already have seen good compitition to our only globally successful industry (IT or generic drug or field trial/clinical trial for drugs/agri chemicals etc) from many “poorer” countries in south Asia, east Europe, Latin America etc.
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@ Jay : Let us find a solution to corruption . Corruption will end when its "fruits" are denied to the players . Now , the gains that people make are mostly cash . Now , all cash is handled in Swiss accounts . So , here is where the problem will be addressed .
The question is , why will the people of our government act to cut its own hands ? That of course does not make sense .
Generally speaking , waiting for the bureaucracy , politicians to one day have bath , and admit their wrongdoings , and take corrective action is similar to religious fantasies . This will NEVER happen , for obvious reasons .
All change has to begin at grassroots . It will take time .
The education does not encourage critical thinking , for one matter . In fact , the race to get more marks / seat in college .
All of this has to do with how children first are brought up , as a child who reasons well with parents will a good habit reason in the world .
This is why religion has always been a tool of politics . Faith , which is always irrational , retards critical thinking .
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India has some fabulous opportunities, success stories and a mega-educated population---as long as they are from the Parsi or Brahmin Hindu communities (and mostly North Indian) . Life and especially infrastructure don't exist in quite the same way for everyone else there. The intrenched attitudes and tradition tries in both obvious AND subtle ways to keep this process alive. I'm afraid that many people will still cling to these chains that bind them in the name of "saving their souls".
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Do you think a handful of people in Beijing and New Delhi can determine the well being of a billion people in each country? Planned economies have great initial bursts of growth but it's mirage. Unless they revert to more market based approaches long term growth is ephemeral.
We saw this kind of growth in the USSR in the 1950's and 60's. Paul Samuelson, a Nobel laureate, predicted then that USSR will overtake the USA by the turn of the century. In fact, it turned out to be a bureaucratic wasteland and streets full of starving peasants and prostitutes.
The Soviets would have 5 year plans to make 20 million boots. They did it even though 12 million were right and 8 million left boots. They did it even if they were all size 8 and all black. China is doing the same today. They build laundry machines, TV's and ship it to villages without electricity. Centrally planned economies end in disasters because they ignore the forces of the markets and the invisible hand.
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Dear Nitk-guy. You are right.
We need to remember that majority does not behave in a moral or honest way unless that is enforced on them. Number of inherently honest people is almost the same in any country, in any society in the world. It is true for wall-street executives and bankers in USA, OR, politicians, industrialists or general public in India. In develped countries, the system try to ensure that and mostly (not all though) successful. In India it is not.
A kid who is brought up in India hardly develop ANY sense of justice and honesty. S/he does not think that abiding law is for his/her own benefit. In Indian society, breaking laws are equated with power. It gives a strange sense of satisfaction. Our history of foreign domination (first ~700 years by Middle Eastern Mslim rulers and then by Europeans/British) strengthen that perception. Such rulers had diferent set of rules for their own community (based on country of origin, skin color, religion, caste etc) and for its subjects (i.e general pubilic). Such diffferent set of rules are still in vogue in indipendent India (based on almost the same parameters as before with some more additional excuses).
Indian society is largely a feudal one, even now .
Yes, religion is a major tool for any politician in the world to provoke general public for certain political agenda. The other one is nationalistic rehtoric, which many confuses or made to confuse with “patriotism”.
In my opinion, some of the practical solutions for changing situation in India are:
1. Think about joining politics, particularly after retirement (when kids are settled/grown up, economic stability is there and you have more matured outlook than just “ideology”).
2. We all should voice our conceren in any possible open forum (e.g impersonal one like this one and/or personal gantherings among friends/relatives etc) against corruption, against corporate crimes, against school authority of your kid and so on.
3. We need to actively participate in both formal and informal educatio n of our kids. We must not allow school or private tution to become the ONLY source of grooming (I am avoiding the term “education” here) of your kid, the future of our country.
4. Judiciouusly use annonymous profile to report illegal and/or unethical activities we witness in our work places, residential societies and around (mainly to news hungry local and international news media like BBC or CNN).
5. Moreover, if you yourself is not resonably honest and hardly take any responsibility of your own activities and responsibilities there is NO way, no education, in the world can groom your kids to become catalysts to develop India. You certainly can purchase heavy weight degrees in India or abrooad, but can never help to make this world a better place (be it India or anywhere else).
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Mr. Biswas,
I do not know how long you have been in India & how well you know the functioning of the Government ( any Political party ) or the working of the bureacracy. If you have been in India long enough and a keen observer of the grass root working of the bureacracy, you would not be so smug about your statistics ( I mean from published sources - UNO, Human Rights or what ever book you are reffering to). In India, and I believe elsewhere in the world but I can vouch safe for India, basic statistics and figures are collected in most sham manner :
1) Overpaid 'Babus'( bureacrats) are assigned the job.
2) Who in return assign it to a lower level.
3) By the time it reaches the grass root level it is assigned to a person who is to be 'punished'- usually a low rung government clerk, who is not in favor of the bosses.
4) This person resents it ( it does not fetch him any 'payment' (read bribe)).
5) As per government rules he is given a bicycle allowance or something similar ( horror of horror - he is supposed to leave his chair & venture out !)
6) So, he finds a solution !
a) Just photocopies (God bless the inventor) the last time such statistics were gathered & writes it manually ( remember - no computers at grass root level), with slight variations ( to prove he has earned his salary ).
b)If he is more innovative he fills out the details fictiously & submits it (There you have a budding fiction writer).
c) Takes an incomplete survey & fills out the remaining statistics keping in view the trend.
d)His immediate superior who has to certify the Stat. report as being honestly & meticulously carried out merely signs on it without a second glance.
7) These staistics then gather dust in some remote office corner until his boss & the one above him & so on recieves a nth reminder from whichever department asked for the statistics.
8) By the time the dusty moth eaten bunch of papers are ready for dispatch a few sheets at the bottom of the pile might have been moth eaten or chewed away by the rodents. These are conveniently torn off and a fresh 'Ender' sheet is added.
So Mr. Biswas, these stats. are then 'analysed', 'dissected', 'crunched' by senior bureacrats who again modify the report as per the will of the then ruling political master and published.
Keep reading.
This data is then 'borrowed' by the media ( TV Channels, newspapers, magazines etc)& debated upon in reams & reams of paper, in hours of prime public time in the TV Channels, by authors of books etc.
Now, Mr. Biswas I wouldn't bet a penny on the reliability of such data. It does not have any credibility.
This is proven by the fact that the trends in economy (or Human Rights or whatever the field) bely the staistics. The reality may be worse or better.
So what is to be questioned - How were these statistics gathered ? Whether they are credible ? Do they reflect what you see around you ? Were they modified to suit a particular point of view ?
In my opinion, quoting statistics is a waste of time. I for one am highly suspicious of it. It reflects nothing, shows us nothing, it can also mislead us.
So, next time you base an article on statistics, please refrain, it will not carry much weightage, at least to readers like me.
Regards
Promod Sharma
India
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#35 .. Pramod,
Interestingly put, and quite true as well. It is often fun, to see people rely on statistics having no credibility of the source itself. But, in this case, the author has cited statistics from credible(supposedly) institutions. We really cant expect to see him go deeper for finer data?
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Economic growth in China and India is not a myth at all.It is a phenomenal improvement in the standard of living of millions of people in both the countries.India and China are the world's two most populous counties, and feeding the hungry millions is a big challenge.The hard-working people of China and India did the miracle of achieving steady growth in the past decade. To-day India is self-sufficient in food.Its growth is export-driven.It is no mean achievement for India to-day that she exports consumers' durables. It is not for nothing that India is an emerging suprpower with nuclear arms. Its agriculture, industry and trade are flourishing. It has an efficient civil service. It has an education system of high standard. The standard of its information communication technology is remarkable. It can also legitimately boast of a modern and efficient health service.
The world's most populous country China too has achieved spectacular growth.Its growth rate is quite high, and it is continous. It is a great credit for the economic managers of China that they could present their contry with persistent high levels of growth without exposing the economy to overheating.
The economic miracles in these two countries have been made possible owing to the shift in India from Nehru's undoctrinaire socialism and in China for moving away from Mao-Zedung's unadulterated communism. Both the countries have benefited significantly from free econonomy.
Though growth in China is not so much export-led, its vast domestic market still reamains an incntive to production and growth. Like India, China is also reaping the fruits of economic reforms and globalization. They are going to emerge as the trade rivals of the world's three biggest economies, namely, the United States, Japan and Germany.
As regards distribution, much,however, leaves to be desired in both the countiries. None is an egalitarian state yet. Programmes for poverty alleviation and social safety nets in none of the two countries is up to the mark.
Be that as it may, the view that Indian and Chinese economic growth is a myth is an exploded myth.
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@#37:
"To-day India is self-sufficient in food": NO, India is NOT sel sufficinet in food any more.
"Its agriculture, industry and trade are flourishing": Not true. Its agriculture is suffering from cronic neglect in terms of both investment and land reform. Lack of land reform in majority of Indian states are also causing social unrest. Agricultural prodictivity is decreasing in many traditionaly highly productive areas (e.g Punjab, Maharastra, West Bengal etc). “Food security, productivity major concerns in India, says PM”: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Food-security-productivity-major-concerns-in-India-says-PM/articleshow/5523167.cms
"It has an efficient civil service": Again this is not true. Indian civil service is THE worst in whole world, as per international agencies.
"It has an education system of high standard": According to many eminent scientists and academicians, Indian education stanrad is falling fast and India is among the least innovative countries in the world.
Moreover economic growth for few that inflate the macro level data, does NOT indicate economic prosperity for the country. You can see my post #29 and #30.
Lastly to Ahsan Sarkarand Promod. Yes, the data we gget mainly from Indian agencies are not much credible. Here we need to know that to make any policy decision and evaluate any policy we need such data. Many data to indicate india’s development are not from Indian agencies. Those data are more credible and the procedure followed to collect those data are the same for other countries with which India is compared. Moreover, we have to rely on some form of data to evaluate our system, than to leave the whole exercise till we satisfy ourselves about acceptable standard of data collection and related statistical procedure.
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No doubt what has been written about is true to a greater extent.But society and economy are not stagnant.There have been recent changes which I feel indicate tricle down of fruits of liberalization reaching to rural folk of India.Govt writing off of farmers loans has relieved agricultural community along with lower interest rates farmers loans.Continues increase in the price of agriculture produce has resulted in the flow of money from urban areas to the agricultural clommunity.To give a few farmers who got around Rs 800/- per metric tonne of sugar cane is now getting Rs.2000/- and more mainly due increase in sugar prices.Price of tur dal has more than doubled.Milk producion has become dependable and remunerative source of income for farmers.Price of almost all agri products has incresed.Distress has dis appeared in rural area.Farmer is once again smiling.He is now finds it economic to improve land,arrange for irrigation,purchase tractors,purchase land.bring under agriculture uncultivated land.Besides he is seen buying motor bikes,constructing for his and purchsing electronic goods for his personal use.Let us not forget landless agri labourer.His labour his fetching more than double the money than it was a few years ago.Coupled with it Public Distribution system and Rural Employment Gurantee have add to his well being.I know it first hand as I am residing in rural India and as practising agricultrist.The transformation in the rural area will greately add to economic growth in future,Incresed purchsing power of farmer will drive our economy in future.In fact I feel it is happening right now.While appreciating living condions of Chinese people we must also remember the kind horror that was unleashed in the name of cultural revolution and forced,inhuman,autocratic and mechanical transformation in that country.Certainly things are far from perfect in our country.But they represnt birth pangs of a new nation.Being a democrtic country our govt,public, as well as corporates will have to adjust with the needs of the majority of the country men.NDA which pursued economic reforms without caring for common man was shown the door despite corporate and media support.Enginered survey results conducted and publicised could not deter Indian voter from having his say in the formation of the govt.Can we say the same thing in connection with Chinese people?
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Fortunately, both countries are evolving and are doing pretty good.
China produces nearly 10 million university graduates annually. Figures on India are unknown, loosely speaking let's say 5 million, hence minimum growth of over 10% is essential for the former. and nearly 8% for the latter. Both countries lack social network, except for China which has a working medical system, but in India its the NGOs, which is not the right thing to do as the government gets away from its responsibility. Their pursuit of development is driving them to establish strong bonds with the resource rich countries where one and all are ruled by extremely unpopular systems. Improvements in Urban growth are noticeable in China, but the hinterland is being ignored. Seemingly, urban development in India is not noticeable and the villages are the same.
The mad rush to become a power of some sort should not be at the expense ignoring the needs of the people of the country which is a recipe for social disasters and most are bloody.
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Today's Times Of India article about "development" in different Indian states:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Philippines-to-Sierra-Leone-is-arc-of-Indian-prosperity-/articleshow/6221434.cms
"Earlier this month, the new MPI measure of poverty was released by the UK-based Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)"......
"The MPI for Kerala (0.065), the best-performing Indian state, is close to that of Paraguay and the Philippines, while that of Goa, the next best (0.094) is similar to that of Indonesia. Punjab's MPI is similar to that of the central American nation of Guatemala while Himachal Pradesh's is close to that of north African Morocco. Tamil Nadu, with an MPI of 0.141, ranks close to Ghana, the poster child for good governance among sub-Saharan countries. While the rest are designated as 'middle-income countries', Ghana ranks as a 'low income country'. The north-eastern states, grouped together in the report, are at the same level of development as Haiti, already the poorest country in the Americas before the earthquake struck. West Bengal shares its MPI with the sub-Saharan Ivory Coast, Orissa with Chad and Rajasthan with Tanzania and Mauritania. The DRC and Rwanda, names synonymous with bloody conflict, have development indicators slightly worse than Madhya Pradesh, but better than Jharkhand and Bihar, the states at the bottom of the Indian report card".
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Basically, India on-the-whole can be divided into two parts--the progressive part (not sure which nation would be equivalent) of the country (Gujarat, Maharashtra and the five southern states), and the other part (rather similar to a larger-population version of Mexico) of which the provably developpable area consists of the states of Haryana and Punjab and possibly Rajasthan--but no others. The economic growth stated is obviously the growth rate of the progressive part--which would need to be TRIPLE the stated figure to cover the rest of the country.
(comparison with Mexico for the northern part of the country: fact that Mexico failed to grow economically under NAFTA despite of its many assets including cheaper labour-force than other two NAFTA countries--basically similar to the picture of the north which also is unable to grow with that "asset").
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Well Jay, your 2010/07/26 08:15 GDT comment basically confirms my statement--that it is the south (Maharashtra, Gujarat and five southern states) that actually progresses (admittedly, these states don't match OECD states such as Canada or US, but...) along with Punjab and Haryana the north's two exceptions (the rest such as Biswas' native WB have long been known as a place where you would be better off "investing" at a casino than in any units at these states).
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It is a very interesting article.
I would like to comment as under:
Contribution to GDP of agriculture and industry/service sector is roughly 20:80: 20% agriculture and 80% industry/services. The people employed in those sector are in the ratio 80:20; 80 in agriculture and 20 in industry/service sector.
Liberalisation has increased GDP because of the growth of industry/service sector. The people in these sectors are direct beneficiary. This has resulted in the incresing the divide.
There is no denying the fact that globalisation has improved GDP and per capita income.
What we need to do now is to use some of those resources to increase investment in agriculture sector and reform agricutural sector to ensure
viable size of the farms and give benefit to the rural poor people.
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I agree that the condition of middle class has improved a lot in India over the past 10 years, but the fate of the poor has become worse. As I can see that there are friends and neighbors around me whose condition has improved but I can also see that more people are moving out of villages and coming to cities. I am not 100% sure that it actuially imporved their economic condition or not but definitely they moved to cities with the perception of better future. When I try to dig out the reason for this huge movement out of villages, the main reason being that they are either selling their lands or just uprooted from their lands due to industrialization. They were poor but at least getting 2 meals a day and may save something for the festival season to become a little bit more impudent in their expenses. Another reason is that due to lure of good life in cities, which is advertised very nakedly in villages/small cities, the sons and daughters of the farmers are no longer interested in the hard work. They want an easy life by doing some school or college education. Like everything else our education system dismally failed in preparing a person who can analyze and work accordingly, they are mostly incapable to compete with the expensive city educated lots. As a result they end up being a begger or something similar to that once migrated to cities.
I totally agree with Mr. Bardhan, that economic progress in India is no where compared to China. The progress is happening but NOT in the scale and magnitude that is required. For that other than the growth of domestic market we need to take care of lot of other issues.
Stop dividing people based on religion, caste, sub-caste, gender, sexual orientation by the politians and by general public.
Make people to volunteer for development and maintenance of local roads and public properties which they use.
Give proper compensation to people as job or education who are uprooted from their place due to economic growth. Also the contracts between the govt. and Company making investment should be made public to show that whatever is promised to the people are true.
Reform our educational institutions and mainly schools and colleges. Implement a neutral system to recruite only the elligible ones with no political connection.
Educate people so that they can use their democratic power to choose the most productive and useful politicians.
The list is even more than that but I just mentioned the few must ones.
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"achimwene wrote:
The article brings out two sides or rather two faces of India, one face shows India's success story and the other shows it abject poverty. On 13th July, BBC published an article titled "More poor" in India than Africa."
A bunch of nonsense. I checked the facts on the CIA's world factbook.
The poster child for Africa, Ghana itself fares much worse than India. The article about malnutrition is correct, but Asia has always had higher malnutrition due to lower population density in Africa and bushmeat. I expect that to change as Africa's exploding population and lack of arable land means great shortages of food in the future. If education is so much better there then why are you a student in India?
Here are the facts from the CIA:
Ghana has $1500 per capita GDP (PPP) compared to $3100 in India. Life expectancy is 60 (Most of Africa is closer to Nigeria which is 47 years!) compared to 67 in India. HIV infection rate is 1.8% in Ghana compared to 0.3% in India (same as US). Literacy rate is 57% in Ghana while in India in 2001 was 61% (More like 70% today). Why is the BBC so eager to sling mud at India? Compare it with Pakistan with it's 49.9% literacy rate or Bangladeseh with 47%!
As for the other assertion by a person above about income disparity in India highest amont BRIC. It's actually the lowest among BRIC'S by the GINI index! India is 36.8, Russia is 42.3, China is 41.5, and Brazil is a whopping 56.8! Even the U.S. is 45.
So let's cut the nonsense and see things as they which is India has long ways to go but a lot better than most 3rd world countries. India is on track after all these years to crush poverty in 10-15 years which is lot more than can be said about most 3rd world countries.
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I have a little problem to accept when someone indicate that India’s GDP is high and that’s why we should think that India is developing, take example of Reliance or Ambanis. They are among the top 10 richest people in the world. Mukesh total value in 2008 is about $ 32 billion and Anil with net worth $17.5 billion (http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/77/india-billionaires-09_Mukesh-Ambani_JNCE.html). These asset value is more than many smaller countries (e,g GDP of Nepal is $ 12.61 billion: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&idim=country:NPL&dl=en&hl=en&q=GDP+of+nepal).
It is not that hard to think that such huge income for few people in India do inflate per capita income of the country and also GDP; without changing much for majority of common people.
Now consider Reliance, the "most successful" Indian MNC in India. It has taken over many government organizations like IPCL in MH. Just ask any middle ranking and general workers if their working condition, income has increased as compared to their own past and also as compared to many other state run industries. The answer is a big no. In reality, the salary and benefits for majority of workers has decreased after Reliance has taken that. Reliance very well know that such semi-skilled and un-skilled workers do not have much option and majority of them HAVE TO continue with less salary and more work load. Of course, few higher management staff got huge pay hike but that does not indicate overall progress for the company and its general workers.
Let’s restrict our discussion to Ambani’s home state, Gujarat, where they invest most. Gujarat is one of the “most prosperous” states in India in terms of industrialization. But it does worse in terms of hunger and education, as compared to “least developed” states like West Bengal and Assam (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7669152.stm). Gujarat is also the state with very high forced/bonded labour in its salt production industries (There are an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 salt pan workers in the coastal districts of Gujarat, mostly belonging to the Koli or other low castes and many others who are migrants from other states. (Bonded Labor in India: Its Incidence and Pattern: (Cornell University ILR School Year 2005): [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] Cotton industry (In 2007, Dakshin Rajasthan Mazdoor Union (DRMU) conducted a study in cottonseed farms in Gujarat, and found that about one-third of the total workforce is below 14 years of age, and another 42 per cent in the age group of 15-18. A little less than half of these children, in both age groups, are girls. Children are also employed in other work in the cotton production chain i.e. in cotton farms and in ginning factories. As a result of mounting pressure from rights activists, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan have both accepted that children are employed in their farms, and promised steps to correct this. The Gujarat government, however, has yet to even accept the fact": http://www.indiatogether.org/2010/feb/hrt-cseed.htm) and diamond industry (Unites States department of Labour report: http://www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/sweat/india.htm). Besides Gujarat stand very low in many other social evils like girl child killing, child marriage etc.
With all these facts in mind, can we consider Gujarat as a really developed state for its high GDP and per capita income? I do not think so.
Gujarat, AP top list of child marriages - India - The Times of India : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gujarat-AP-top-list-of-child-marriages/articleshow/5742216.cms
Census data show a consistent drop in the sex ratio (933F:1000M).The intensity of sex ratio imbalance in the 0-6 age group in some states are Punjab (793),Haryana(820),Himachal Pradesh(897),*Gujarat(878)*.
http://www.legalserviceindia.com/article/l292-Female-Foeticide.html
I do feel that "development" must not be judged solely by economic parameters. There are many countries which does not appear in the list of Billionaires or huge per capita income but have a much better civic infrastructure, better education (both quality and quantity wise), better employment rate, less terrorist/extremist violence, more efficient judiciary and above all, happier citizens.
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Jay,
"I do feel that "development" must not be judged solely by economic parameters"
Certainly India's government is awful in getting anything done. India's UN HDI ranking is far lower than it ought to be. Infact, if India had good able adminstrators, the life expectancy would near 75 and literacy rates over 90% with the same per capita GDP.
But, constant pessimism feeds on itself. Indians need to build their confidence up on the areas where they have started to suceeded and look to the future. Note that in the 1990's, India's literacy rate was barely 50% compared to 70% now and infant mortality was twice as high as now. In general in India, government is the problem and the private sector is the solution.
With the high GDP growth rates of 9.5%, India's HDI (including heatlh/education) will improve as the per capita GDP growth accelerates (note that India's population growth rate is now only 1.375% so the per capita GDP is growing much faster than before). The economy in India is growing fast due to the efficient private sector. Bascially the future looks like rising per capita GDP will primarily improve the human development index. This is the "brute" force method of improving India, but I see this as better than relying soley on the government which is mostly sluggish and incompotent.
If India had an efficient government like China coupleed with it's private sector, India could solve it's problems much faster, but I don't see any improvement happening in the Indian government. India will be built by individuals and private enterprise.
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Life expectancy (as per CIA website: (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html). India comes at 159 out of 224 countries while China at 92. Countries like Iran, Iraq, Guatemala, Honduras, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia are ahead of us. We always can emphasize on those countries below us but that will not make us any better. It is the same for almost any parameter. For more facts about India one can see my post #29 (for our pathetic ranking in literacy, education and research, public health, governance etc).
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Dear BigOil, I partly agree with you that India first need to build its confidence and focus on some specific key areas to develop. I do acknowledge that we do not have enough resource (despite of being the third largest economy in Asia) to focus on all the issues.
Till few years ago, I used to think that privatization and efficient private sector was the answer to move forward. Then I took part in some policy making decisions in a “very successful” private sector company in India. There I realized how inefficient they are, almost all of them, both in IT and Biotech sector. The term “inefficient” I am using to not to describe the current profit margin; but for the long term prosperity of the country, building SUITABLE human resource (to sustain current rate of growth) for the organization to become successful in global business in that particular sector, and most importantly to distribute its economic benefit among its own employees. Almost everything is grossly absent even in the most successful Indian companies and they are no better than well-known Government organizations, so far the country and common employees are concerned. IN Govt organizations, the top management is highly corrupt and that gradually trickled down to the grassroot level workers which ultimately destroyed the organizations. On the other hand, Indian private companies are equally “inefficient” at the top level in terms of evaluating any new prospect (of any new technology or product or service), sharing financial benefits with general employees and sharing at least few basic social responsibilities. It is possible because there is almost no corporate governance to discipline our corporate sector ( due to deep rooted and highly successful nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and industrialists). You can check my post #30 for little more detail. As I mentioned there, “Over dependence on cheap, highly exploitable labour force, cheap raw materials, almost no ethical or legal or environmental obligations (largely on which Indian industrial “success” depends) are not the best options to develop a country in the long run”. We have witnessed so many consequences in recent past. I am giving you one example: Till late 90s, India was one of the main producers of antibiotics (using those same ingredients I mentioned earlier- cheap labour, raw material and lack of any credible corporate governance). Then few other countries started to use the same that India offered. Now almost all antibiotics production units are shut down.
In short, Government must not get involved in day-to-day operations of running a business but should be always alert to enforce strict over-sight to discipline any (private) business operations in the country, particularly where basic issue are at threat (environment, public health, food safety, national security are concerned).
In my opinion the main thrust area for India should be to reform its BASIC education (NOT higher education and research). The quality of manpower we currently generate are not suitable to build a country (technically, and more importantly, ethically/morally). You can read one of my blogs I wrote sometime ago, “Primary and secondary education reform should be India's top priority”: http://jaychatterjee.blogspot.com/2009/04/primary-and-secondary-education-reform.html .
Lastly I like to say that "confidence", you were talking about, comes from knowledge (let’s not confuse it with degrees) and knowledge comes first from accepting reality and then analyzing informations/data. Success of any democracy also depends on those two: 1) transparent information on which people decide (vote) whom to select to represent them in parliaments; and also, 2) reasonable ability to analyse the information they get. Both are mostly lacking from our social and formal education system and political setup.
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Jay,
I know what the reality is. I also know where India used to be which is even worse than today. The reason economic growth in India is not uplifting as many people as it could or should are lack of effort in improving Agricultural output. India loses 50% of it's grain and produce due to lack of graneries/ cold storage. The government overwhemingly controls this process. The government is incompotent in India and that won't change. The private sector needs to allowed in to help in this area. India's per hectare yields are less than 50% than of the U.S. despite a warmer climate. Combine these two and India can effectively triple it's food output which can solve malnutrition.
Secondly, India's growth has come from the service industry. Rather than bad mouth the entrepeneurs who have built this industry (which provides a huge tax windfall for the government which allows them to even pay for a rural employment program) which is doing a great job, the Indian government can help unshackle the constraints on manufacturing. Light unskilled manufacturing can provide millions of jobs for people who would otherwise be in subsitence farming. I am shocked that India has a law requiring government approval to layoff more than 100 workers. With such anti-business laws, no wonder manufacturing is underperforming. Manufacturing is the key to eliminating rural poverty.
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Industries are not doing any charity by doing business in India. They will go wherever they find it attractive for THEIR OWN profit. But the local people have to face the consequences if they do something wrong (remember Bhopal?). They are creating job and giving taxes (with lot of cheating and evasions) is not enough reason to allow them to do whatever they like. Majority of R&D centers by almost all Indian MNCs and big corporate houses are nothing but a ploy to evade as many taxes as they can and also cheat its own employees. It is the duty of Indian government to discipline them, and in which they deliberately fail in big way.
Other than some isolated island of economic development, India is slipping down in almost every index in governance, environment, public health, per capita food consumption, food security, internal security for its citizens, and civil infrastructure in both rural and urban areas. In short, despite of some financial development, quality of life for common Indian citizen is deteriorating since last couple of decades of post-economic liberalization. Few shopping malls and some flyovers in some cities do not indicate prosperity for the city, with ever increasing slum and unplanned growth. Take for example Mumbai, the most affluent city and business capital of India. A recent survey by BBC pointed out that about 35% of Mumbai’s geographical area was under slum in 1950s, now it has increased to about 82%. Anyone can have an idea of that if s/he travels from Mumbai airport to Navi Mumbai.
Your information that “rural employment program, which is doing a great job” is not true either. I think you are referring National Rural Income Guarantee program (NREGP), or “Gramn Rojgar Yogona” as commonly known. It’s efficacy is about only 6% (http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/sep/21jobs.htm). Majority of such “garibi Hatao” type schemes are conceived and implemented mainly for vote bank politics and for some specific business houses. Their efficacy to reduce poverty is proven to be ineffective. Investment in infrastructure (e.g four lane highway across India, commonly known as “Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) project” was deliberately been slowed down by UPA government (http://hinduvoice.net/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/archive/hnl/20080612025007/ ) and they started all those wastage of public money in the name of “right to revolution” and NREGP type populist programs.
If government can provide a peaceful environment, properly implement laws of the land and do unbiased arbitration of industrial disputes (between two industrial hoses and mainly between common citizens and mighty Industrial houses), India can attract more investment in a more clean, nation-friendly way than by allowing industrial houses to break laws, pollute our environment, exploit its own employees and customers. I am not giving an impression that all Indian industries are like that, but majority are. And anyone who has slightest involvement with any manufacturing or financial industry (as I know for sure) knows that very well.
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"decades of socialist controls and red tape stifled enterprise"
It has become second nature to blame founding fathers of India for their socialist programs.
After half a century, with free enterprise caught with its pants down, I am only happy that they did so. Otherwise India would have been still poor with western CEOs pilfering the rest of the pittance left by colonialism.
With India in its infancy at the mercy of greedy western CEOs, there would have been no Tata, Birla, or even Ambanis. The license raj actually protected local businessmen, and it was absolutely necessary.
Remember many other countries too became independent in the wake of India's independence. They are no better than those days having been ruled by despots who were supported by western businesses.
And also the socialist foundation was responsible for catapulting lot of poor people to middle class when liberalization measures started.
So before blaming the founding fathers, think twice because you are echoing the same frustration that foreign CEOs expressed in not being allowed to robe India in its infancy. I am still for India to restrict foreign participation to the present levels of 40%.
And don't compare India with China because Chinese exports are dependent on an artificial currency rate and essentially has to be reverse. Chinese yuan is actually equal to or more than 1 US dollar. Indian currency is about 45 rupees to 1 dollar and that means has more 45 times as much room to grow.
Only problem if Indians are blindly aping the west and pile up debts now such growth will never happen.
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I do not know why my previous post (#52) was hidden. I am posting that again.
Industries are not doing any charity by doing business in India. They will go wherever they find it attractive for THEIR OWN profit. But the local people have to face the consequences if they do something wrong (remember Bhopal?). They are creating job and giving taxes (with lot of cheating and evasions) is not enough reason to allow them to do whatever they like. Majority of R&D centers by almost all Indian MNCs and big corporate houses are nothing but a ploy to evade as many taxes as they can and also cheat its own employees. It is the duty of Indian government to discipline them, and in which they deliberately fail in big way.
Other than some isolated island of economic development, India is slipping down in almost every index in governance, environment, public health, per capita food consumption, food security, internal security for its citizens, and civil infrastructure in both rural and urban areas. In short, despite of some financial development, quality of life for common Indian citizen is deteriorating since last couple of decades of post-economic liberalization. Few shopping malls and some flyovers in some cities do not indicate prosperity for the city, with ever increasing slum and unplanned growth. Take for example Mumbai, the most affluent city and business capital of India. A recent survey by BBC pointed out that about 35% of Mumbai’s geographical area was under slum in 1950s, now it has increased to about 82%. Anyone can have an idea of that if s/he travels from Mumbai airport to Navi Mumbai.
Your information that “rural employment program, which is doing a great job” is not true either. I think you are referring National Rural Income Guarantee program (NREGP), or “Gramn Rojgar Yogona” as commonly known. It’s efficacy is about only 6% ([Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]. Majority of such “garibi Hatao” type schemes are conceived and implemented mainly for vote bank politics and for some specific business houses. Their efficacy to reduce poverty is proven to be ineffective. Investment in infrastructure (e.g four lane highway across India, commonly known as “Golden Quadrilateral (GQ) project” was deliberately been slowed down by UPA government (http://hinduvoice.net/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi/archive/hnl/20080612025007/ ) and they started all those wastage of public money in the name of “right to revolution” and NREGP type populist programs.
If government can provide a peaceful environment, properly implement laws of the land and do unbiased arbitration of industrial disputes (between two industrial hoses and mainly between common citizens and mighty Industrial houses), India can attract more investment in a more clean, nation-friendly way than by allowing industrial houses to break laws, pollute our environment, exploit its own employees and customers. I am not giving an impression that all Indian industries are like that, but majority are. And anyone who has slightest involvement with any manufacturing or financial industry (as I know for sure) knows that very well.
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National/state laws on minimum wages, company’s own written contract on minimum benefit (with paid leaves, weekends, several financial benefits like PLI etc) are routinely broken in all possible ways even by big companies like Reliance that make Rs. 440 corers profit a quarter. Their work environment (BTW, Saturday is a full working day for Reliance) and company policies hardly match with any decent company of international repute. Employees in the profitable and powerful sugarcane industry in UP hardly knows what weekend means. CEOs of many publicly traded Indian companies treat the company as his own parental property. That’s why Ambani brothers never find it awkward or unethical to consider whole worth of Reliance as their personal property while they readily acknowledge Forbes rich list. This is very much in contrast to a company with modern, civilized management like Tatas.
Such feudal ways to run companies are very common in India. Such companies not only encourages corruption (unlike few companies like Tatas and some IT companies that do not directly promote corruption in public life) but also have a bigger impact on family values of its employees , and huge impact on national well-being.
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Vyatz,, you are right. India is fast loosing its beneficial traditions and acquiring western greed WITHOUT having the supporting law and order implementation, effective judiciary, public awareness and civic ways to pose any anti-people business or administrative policies. That’s why many western companies (not all) and Indian companies are so enthusiastic about investing in India. They very well know that they can dump their outdated/outlawed products, in developed countries (e.g pesticides, drugs, lead based paint and so on) and/or environmentally hazardous or legally banned technology to manufacture items (and then sell in Indian domestic and foreign market), at the same time use Indian resources and lack of corporate governance and lack of law and order (and ease to break laws, even if that is there) to increase their profits. Many European countries have now placed strict rules to limit corporate salaries and benefits to tame greedy and corrupt practices of corporate executives (mainly financial sector), but India is no where near such laws.
CEOs of many publicly traded companies behave in a typical feudal way as if the company is their parental property. They officially consider that all assets of they company belongs to them (that’s why Forbes type rich list include so many Indians). Only few Indian companies like Tatas are exception. And probably that’s why Ratan Tata does not figure in that list of top 10 Indian industrialists, despite of running (Not “owning” as he describes) the MOST globally successful Indian brand/MNC.
Many successful Indian corporate houses do not practice many employee friendly policies that any decent western company follows. Many “successful” Indian companies like Reliance (with huge profit of Rs 440 crores in a single quarter) have Saturday as full working day. Employees in the mighty (both politically and financially) sugarcane industry near Delhi and UP hardly know what weekend means. Such policies surely does help to maximize profit for the company (i.e for the owner and few high ranking executives) but it take a huge toll of physical, mental and family value of all employees (including those who benefit financially from such feudal policies. It also put pressure on other companies and has huge impact on national well being (to promote family values and corporate ethics).
No wonder despite of all these noise about post-91 “development” , Sautik wrote, “Today 223 districts - India has 636 districts - in 20 states are "Maoist affected", up from 55 districts in nine states six years ago. Ninety of the affected districts, according to the government, are experiencing "consistent violence". PM Manmohan Singh calls it the country's "greatest internal security challenge". (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/03/indias_maoists_a_doomed_revolution.html). That is not a great sign that general people are too happy to prefer hiding in jungles, living a tough life, playing with their lives simply because they got bored with Indian “development”!
In previous years (post liberalization), we, general Indians were not that prosperous; we had so many problems with our over active, omni present and highly inefficient government. Previously it was only Government and now it is both, govt AND private companies. Now we are fast losing the mental peace, happiness, cleaner environment, better education, little more morality we once had. Happiness is not a product that you can buy, but an art that need careful grooming in a suitable environment.
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Correction to my previous post (#56):
They very well know that they can dump their outdated/outlawed (IN DEVELOPED COUNTRIES) products, (e.g pesticides, drugs, lead based paint and so on) and/or environmentally hazardous or legally banned technology to manufacture items (and then sell in Indian domestic and foreign market), at the same time use CHEAP Indian resources (BOTH MATERIALISTIC AND HUMAN), lack of corporate governance and lack of laws (or ease to break laws, in case it is there) to increase their profits.....
Such policies surely does help to maximize profit for the company (i.e for the owner and few high ranking executives) but it take a huge toll ON physical, mental and family value of all employees (including those who benefit financially from such feudal policies.....
In previous years (PRE-liberalization), we, general Indians were not that prosperous; ......
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This is very interesting news!
By 2030 I expect China to be No.1 Global Economy in the World, 2nd would be India, then 3rd would be USA!
As long as China and India maintain their strong large population, and reduce poverty, both nations will become super economies in the future
Both are maintaining strong economic growth now and I expect that to continue
As long as both currencies in both nations are weak in long-term it will help strong growth and become superpowers!
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"It has become second nature to blame founding fathers of India for their socialist programs."
There is difference between allowing "Western" companies into India and allowing private Indian enterprise. The license Raj was a corrupt system that basically enriched one family and one political party. The founding dad's did a good job of creating the basic government and territorial integrity of India. The failure was in the 1960's, 70's and 80's (little better in the 80's but not enough). Had India done the same reforms in 1951 or 1961 that they did in 1991 with protection for local Industry (which they still have BTW), India would be like Japan today. Note that Japanese companies dominate the economy in Japan. Now Japan has had a 20 year recession (the lost decades). Yet, a brutal recession in a 1st world setting still provides a much better quality of life than pre-industrial extreme poverty.
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Unlike China, India’s economic liberalization in 1991 was not a well-planned and gradual transition to open market but an absolute necessity (after Indian had to deposit its gold reserve to Bank of England) due to financial mismanagement since independence. That’s why after initial success it lost both its direction and political will, from the same people who introduced (rather forced to introduce) that reform. Later India welcomed any investment without much safe guard to its people and environment. That trend still continues. It was/is reasonably safe from recent global financial turmoil mainly because it was insulated from global economy due to some basic safe-guards by our old, socialist policies still in place.
Any economy that wants to be like Japan must understand that it needs innovation and invention to succeed in global market. Indian style copy-paste “development”, routine maintenance jobs or polluting manufacturing jobs can only bring prosperity in the short term, but not in the long run. And to prepare Indian’s huge, young manpower to do that, we need to build a society and education system that sustain curiosity, openness and real talent. Private tuition enabled, mugging up grade technician-quality “good boys” (as manufactured and promoted by our current education system and job market) may be able to supply routine engineers in the gulf, “technical coolies” abroad (mainly because most students in western countries do not study science/technology and the gap is filled by Indian and Chinese) but can never build a knowledge based society in their home country (WHERE WE HAVE TO DEVELOP OUR OWN LEADERSHIP AND DIRECTION) which can sustain long term prosperity of our nation, including its industries.
Indian probably has reached its limit by offering such routine manufacturing, semi-skilled R&D jobs and maintenance type IT jobs. Now many other countries are coming up in a big way to challenge India in almost every such semi-skilled and/or un-skilled sector.
In India, there is hardly any “R” in our R&Ds. There is “D” in some cases but we have no perception about “R” part.
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"Biswas" another Bengali glorifying China at the expense of India
Nothing New !!
What about Gross human violation in China ?
Can we In India remove age hold houses to put up a Mcdonald for Olympics beautification ??
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India is growing rapidly since the dismantling of the government stranglehold on the business and privatisation of public companies.
However, most of the wealth has gone to the politicians,the bureacrates
and corporate tycoons in unholy alliance with the politicians.
Whosoever can ditch the ethics has a chance of getting rich in India.
Government merely exists to enjoy the power & perks of the office without
providing any direction and good policies. India's cities show signs of prosperity but the small towns and rural areas are stagnant.Unfortunately, Western Journalists go to the big cities and come back with the stories of India's rise and its inevitable superpower status. This is also a result of huge propaganda by the corporate/bureucrate types at the World Economic Forum in Davos every year to attract investment. They have done good job of selling Indiato the suckers. Geopolitical forces have also helped India. America focused on its dominance in 21st century(Dick Chenny, Jeb Bush,etc)are concerned about rising China and trying to prop up India as a counter force. It is another loser for America. India can't even compete with China in South Asia let alone in Latin America and South East Asia where another ally Japan is moribund.
Despite India's failure against China, it continues to be hyped as western media brackets China and India together.China is well ahead of India in governnance, policy making and implementation.There is not much
hope of catching up because of geriatric leadership in India who are short on ideas, energy and honesty. What a democracy where everything is opaque and no accountability. West continues to equate large with the quality.
so long property values continue to go up people in small towns can
also participate in the propsperity in a small way. Once real estate bubble bursts, people will have less money to bribe the bureaucrates and politicians. Once more India will slip to moderate rate of growth. It is not possible to thrive on the hype for a long time.
China has followed bad policy of growth by inflicting misery on its people and the environment. It will pay a high price for the degradation.
I am hoping someday a good western journalist will visit small towns and villages in India in North & South and tell a real story as told by the people without hype, distortion and spin.
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To have long term prosperity, first you need to have short term prosperity. Even Japan and China focused on low skill and so called dirty manufacturing. I don't understand this obsession with knowledge based industries. That's fine for the leading edge, but India is huge country. That's jumping the gun, India needs to first make it as a middle income country before worrying about moving to the next level.
India has 32 million workers in the textile industry but is far short of it's potential due to government laws that require approval to layoff workers if greater than 100 employees. So, basically the Indian textile industry is small scale and uncompetitive with China and even others like Vietnam. If these laws were changed, the Indian textile industry could easily employ 100 million workers. That will make a big dent in poverty as it will be primarily subsistence farmers who go in there. If this replicated in toy manufacturing and food processing/agriculture, it will have a far bigger impact on poverty rather than high end knowledge industries which only employ a few million.
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BigOil, your perception about India is totally out-of-reality.
Long term prosperity comes ONLY with a plan to prosper in the long term. It does not come automatically as you might think. There are many countries who prospered in the short term but failed in a big way in the long term (e.g almost all former communist countries, Argentina and many more). Japan had and still has a solid plan to prosper in the long run.
After this recent financial debacle, China has realized the pitfall of becoming the manufacturing center for the whole world and now shifting from exclusively export based economy and trying to develop it internal market . Moreover, many Chinese (even Government officials and ministers) now acknowledge some irreparable damages by its manufacturing industry to its environment, social structure (migrant labour, long absence of family members etc), and national security (remember the recent conflict in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region among Han Chinese and Uighurs).
Any country that want to have a first world quality-of-living must rely on knowledge based economy and skilled service sector more than semi-skilled manufacturing sector. That is true for all, unless you have huge natural resource like Middle-East and some African countries. But in those countries growth is sometimes negative despite of huge per capita income, and moreover their huge natural resources are considered (by many) as a major problem for all-inclusive development and also autocratic, medieval style of governance (which mainly depend on such easy, natural resources to sustain their autocratic rule and it also prevent to develop education-research and public awareness among its citizens).
Your perception about Indian textile industry is wrong. It heavily depends on external market and will expose India more to outside influence in that sector (as China’s manufacturing industry faced in recent time). “Tougher times ahead for India's textiles industry”: http://southasia.oneworld.net/todaysheadlines/tougher-times-ahead-for-indias-textiles-industry. And no one really says that it is due to government labor policy. Poverty can never be handled if we forget to discipline our industries and policy makers need to emphasize equally on wealth generation and wealth distribution. That’s why few basic safe guards are absolute necessary, particularly in a high population country like India.
India needs to develop its own market and that needs more people, common people should have more disposable income.
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Do I need to say more about present status of India now? Read the worrisome (and very common we general Indians know from their daily experiences) report in today's Times of India. “Greedy CWG officials play with nation’s reputation”: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Greedy-CWG-officials-play-with-nations-reputation/articleshow/6238931.cms
In an astounding disclosure that could blow the lid off a big scandal involving the Commonwealth Games, top sources in the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) told TOI that every quality certificate scrutinised by a CVC team in 16 Games projects so far has turned out to be forged or suspect.
"It's a very disturbing discovery," said an official. "Fake certificates were being routinely issued to pass substandard work and material. We have not yet been able to gauge the financial implication of this irregularity but it is certain to have led to very big gains for vendors and contractors."
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Now consider this news, "Iron ore mines going for Rs 1 lakh in Chhattisgarh?" :http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Iron-ore-mines-going-for-Rs-1-lakh-in-Chhattisgarh/articleshow/6245781.cms
On June 2, 2004, two brothers, Atul Jain and Sanjay Jain, pooled together Rs 1 lakh in Delhi to set up a company, Pushp Steel and Mines Ltd. The same day, the company applied for a prospecting licence for an iron ore mine in Chhattisgarh, more than 1,000km away.
The company had zero experience and almost no capital - both pre-requisites for a licence. But the state government granted it not just a prospecting licence (PL) but also a mining lease. This meant it could not just look for ore, it could start extracting it straight away. On the state government's recommendation, the Centre approved the grant. And when a rival company challenged the grant in the mines tribunal, it was dismissed on technical grounds. Finally, it took an order by Delhi High Court, five years later, to hold the grant to Pushp Ltd as "unsustainable in law".
It shows how deep the level of corruption is. It also shows total lack of corporate governance in India exposes local people to mercies of such corrupt business houses. It does not take much intelligence to understand how such business houses will take care of environment and interest of local people. It will surely give employment to some influential local politicians and young people. Those people would start propaganda and suppress any opposition voice in that area.
I am sure both state and central Govt advertise it as "great investment" and huge prospect for "development". True stories like Vinayak Sen and Shankar Guha Niyogi are far too common in India. Unaware readers can read about them from the following links:
About Shankar Guha Niyogi:
“The peacock no longer dances...”: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
About Binakay Sen:
“Dr Binayak Sen, My Brother, Our Hero”: http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2008/08/2328
“Free Binayak Sen Campaign: Resist the Silent Emergency”: http://www.binayaksen.net/
“The peacock no longer dances...”: [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
“RULE WITHOUT LAW : JUSTICE MOCKED”: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main27.asp?filename=Cr100307Justice_mocked.asp
The price for so-called development is far too high for majority of people while the fruit of “development” is largely restricted among English speaking urban population and among the people with power.
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Eastern Europe, China all have a higher HDI (human development index ) than India, so even if India "stalls" in the middle income category like Mexico or Brazil, the quality of life will be much better than it is today.
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"The price for so-called development is far too high for majority of people while the fruit of “development” is largely restricted among English speaking urban population and among the people with power. "
That's because the focus has continually been on service industries rather than light manufacturing like China or even Malaysia, Vietnam etc.. India has a large merchandise trade deficit which needs to be fixed by growth in goods exports. Light manufacturing (and agriculture infrastructure) provides employment for less educated and unskilled workers and greatly helps in reducing poverty. In contrast, while the IT industries are great for revenue and GDP growth for India, they only provide about 2 million direct jobs in a country with a workforce approaching 500 million.
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Merchandise trade deficit does not need to be fixed by merchandise only. It has been proved time and again that service sector and high value added products are more beneficial and profitable than general merchandise, even from environmental point of view. Those pollute much less as compared to general manufacturing units, particularly in a country like India where lack of suitable law (in some cases) and pathetic implementation of existing laws (very common) is a major concern.
Yes, manufacturing industry should be there. But any industry, light or heavy, MUST be monitored and laws of the land must be adhered to, very strictly. One major Indian industry, construction, is highly prone to blatant violation of laws (minimum wage, working condition, public safety, land deals, compensation for land, quality of construction etc). In fact, real estate business in any metro cities in India is alleged to be controlled by underworld people or people with underworld/mafia connections. One can read in any Indian newspaper (even in this blog) the level of corruption, crime during construction for Delhi commonwealth games. BTW, owner of Delhi based construction giant DLF is one of the top 10 richest people in the world!
There is hardly any Indian industry that regularly run its affluent treatment plants (to save running cost and increase profit), while mostly directly discharge even its highly toxic waste into rivers, sea, near by field etc. Some industries are known to pump its highly toxic, liquid by-product directly below ground that potentially contaminates ground water.
IT industry is a much cleaner industry as compared to blatant violation of laws by Indian construction, manufacturing and agro based industries. India must reform its agriculture, mainly the land reform issue. But I know there is hardly any political party which will dare to touch that issue, mainly in the more feudal states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, UP, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana etc. Secondary agriculture in India is almost non-existent and the existing ones are too primitive to sustain (both environmentally and economically). Rise on food grain price or agro based products hardly benefits the farmers. Most of such increase in retail price goes to the pocket of middle men and businessmen. Everyone knows that. It’s a textbook knowledge in agricultural economics. Yet hardly anyone is interested to do something to improve the situation.
Over dependence on mass scale, “dirty” manufacturing has its huge problem, as China experienced (my post #64). And India must not blindly follow that model of China or Middle East.
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Corruption will be problem in India for a while. Even middle income countries like Mexico and Brazil have lots of corruption. I think it will be difficult in the short to medium term to create a Singapore style small and efficient government.
The IT/service industry exports are a bonus for India which is good (and that also causes dependency on the global market), but that's being taken care of by entrepreneurs. Why is the Indian government stifling manufacturing? I don't think having a clean service industry and then importing goods makes a country superior environmentally. On paper it looks like one country is more polluting than the other, but where the goods are consumed is where the pollution should be assigned.
Land reform won't happen because first you have to find non-agricultural work for those farmers who have little education. China has absorbed a lot of their rural workforce in light manufracturing. The IT/Service industry requires a level of education that they don't have. Therefore, the situation in India today is the result of that. Basically industries like Textiles, toys, assembling electronics etc.. are needed to absorb large numbers of rural workers. Textiles alone employ 32 million compared to 2 million in IT. Auto industry is already employing over 10 million. Once, a large part of the workforce stops depending on land for thie livelihood, land reform is possible. Only then can the small inefficient farms in India be made into larger more productive farms. India has about 270 million farmers, so about 230 million or so low skilled construction and manufacturing jobs need to created. First world countries only have 3% of their workforce in farming (The final destination for the Indian labor force as well).
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Indian manufacturing industry is not capable to compete globally. Government is encouraging it but there is hardly any Indian manufacturing industry that can compete in international level, both technology-wise and product quality-wise (at an affordable price; despite of breaking so many laws, polluting environment, cheating national exchequer etc). The main reason for that there is hardly any R&D by them or large scale investment to develop new, competitive product. We always depend on outside technology even for basic products. Nobody will give you the best technology they have and allow you to compete with them. You have to develop yourself. And for those products which does not need much technology, countries with dictatorial or communist rule have a better advantage than us to make cheaper product. Moreover, there is not much sense to produce more than you can sell. India automobile industry hardly can compete in the global scale (other than in few closed, undeveloped economy like some African country, east Europe etc).
Indian textile industry is highly exploitative like many other industries like construction. The farmers who produce cotton (remember suicide of cotton farmers), the laborers who pick up cotton (mostly children and women) are not at all paid the minimum wages. Even then, Indian textile industry is not that competitive so far price of Indian cotton items are concerned ((at least as we see those in US-EU market). India cannot produce more as there is quota in almost all major textile importing countries and Indian internal market has not developed much to sell the product internally. It is NOT government that is creating problem for its growth.
What is possible for China, is not so do-able by India; and in many cases it is good for India.
The number of people employed by any industry in India
Now if you consider, that about 18% of agricultural labor force has been made redundant, without having ANY alternative job, in the past 5 years (2003-2008) due to industrialization. If you consider about 65% of Indian population still depends on agriculture and 18% of that is made useless, then there is no, absolutely NO, industry can compensate that. Such huge loss of able manpower not only has its impact on national economy but also has its effect on social unrest.
India must undertake meaningful land reform and invest in agriculture, develop secondary agriculture.
We must not compare ourselves with first world countries. The currrent population of US is about 340 million while for India it is 1.2 billion. We have to take care of our common citizens first and think policies on that basis.
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It is Belived that, There are some Racist who try to dominate other part of the countrie peoples. (It is starting from Languare, relegion, food etc.....)Hope this is the cause for China.
All these issues has to be rectified to have more growth.
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Actually the China model is the best model for India. Combine that with the IT/service industry and India get's 2 strong engines of growth.
It satisfies both the high end and the low end.
China is comparable in size and had very similar issues and in many ways is more similar to India than would initially appear (Issues like land for industry, corruption are faced in both places). I think the Indian leadership probably focused too much on "knowledge" based industries and all the latest jargon in use today, rather than basics like getting India to become a middle income country through large scale low end manufacturing and building food storage and irrigation infrastructure.
It's no wonder the poor in India feel left out on India's growth, because in many ways they are. Manufacturing industries need to be given the help they need to grow and employ vast numbers of India's poor farmers. India has already tried 40 years of socialism and failed, better to move on and look at countries that made it.
Step one, build a viable water distribution system, including check dams, reservoirs, artificial lakes, rain water harvesting and even river interlinking. Since land is an issue, more land should be reclaimed from the sea like the Netherlands. Infact even Mumbai is built on mostly reclaimed land from the sea and by joining islands. Once the water infrastructure is in place, farmers won't be depending on erratic rainfall for their water.
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Chinese economy is a naked capitalist economy governed by communists; while countries in west Europe mostly follow socialist pattern of economy and governance. Ruling elites and industrialists in China (mainly in cities) hardly care about fellow citizens in villages. But China can suppress and afford to do that simply because it has autocratic communist rule.
There were many instances comparable to Singur/Nandigram in China but those were effectively suppressed by communist regime (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-01-11-chinaprotest_N.htm). In fact, in many feudal states in INdia do the same and suppress local opposition in favour of big indusrries (e.g SEZ in many parts in India, including in Navi Mumbai). Singur/Nandigram can happen in few Indian states like West Bengal and Kerala.
India has long past the position where it could have undertaken more industrialization. In fact, India was 6th largest industrialized country in the world till 1980s. In present global scenario, industries today are more capital intensive and much less number of labor required per unit investment. Take for example USA. It has only 340 million people with largest economy (more than 10 times larger than India) and one of the most industrialized countries in the world. It has about 10% unemployment, 3.5 million people homeless (~ 1% of population: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/). It clearly shows that any level of industrialization is not enough to accommodate people. In fact, it is quite clear to researchers that industrialization increases inequality (in a society) and also poverty. You hardly can find a slum or a bagger in any agrarian society (as in a village in India) as compared to the most industrialized city. It is also clear that almost every government, mainly the opportunist capitalist economics like in US and feudal countries like India, like to force the prices of agricultural commodity to remain low at the expanses of farming community. Everywhere in the world, the farmers are the lowest end of the society (economically). They are forced to sell their products at lower price. Quality of living (NOT quality of life) for them are not that great. When a car price or a computer price goes up, we hardly care. But when price for food grain goes up, every one is up in arms. ON top of that, agriculture sector is gradually being occupied by big industrial houses. In US, only 4% of producers (mostly big corporate houses like Monsanto, Cargill etc) produce more than 80% of farm products in US. It has a huge implications on local employment and food security for the country. As a result US government recently introduced "know your food, know your farmer" program (http://www.usda.gov/blog/usda/entry/know_your_farmer_know_your).
In short, "Social surveys demonstrated that industrialization had not eradicated poverty as promised by its proponents” (source: “The invention of heroes”: Nature 30th July, 2009, pp 572-583).
The reason people talk about knowledge based industries to develop a country are many:
1. It forces government to make basic education mandatory (particularly where inflow of educated, skilled, foreign work force is not that great, e.g India).
2. With basic education comes so many social and economic advantages like more demand for transparency in governance, effective and organized opposition to social and corporate crimes.
3. Knowledge based industries are more employee friendly and less (environmentally) polluting.
4. Lastly, it has the potential to generate huge employment without occupying too much space/land (as compared to traditional industry).
But for that we need to develop a suitable basic education system, NOT the type we follow in India since independence (text-book worms and database mugging "good boys"). Published data show that India is least innovative country in the world and QUALITY of Indian education and research is going down fast since 1985 (since the data as recorded). India now (2008) comes at 176, out of 229 countries so far QUALITY of scientific research is concerned (as of 2008, in all branches of science), as per Scopus database http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php?area=0&category=0®ion=all&year=all&order=cd&min=0&min_type=it .
A traditional industrialists who has no subject knowledge will not have much success in such areas. That's why typical Lala type Indian industrialists have very remote chance to succeed in such area. and they will always favor typical manufacturing industry where they can use their out-dated, feudal management skill.
An easy way out, for both our policy makers and industrialists, are to pitch for crude manufacturing jobs. They do not acknowledge the fact that NO industry in the world can absorb about 22 corers agricultural labor force who were made redundant in last one decade only, due to industrialization in India. This is more important in the view that today's industries are more investment intensive and need less and less labor. So if an investment of X amount of USD ($) used to generate Y number of jobs in 1970s, and the same amount of investment generate Z number of jobs today; Y will be far greater than Z. On top of that, distribution of profit from that investment is more skewed towards fewer people.
Yes, irrigation and land reform is a major issue to develop Indian agriculture. But land reclamation is not an economically viable, mainly for agriculture purpose. It can be left to big industrialists with deep pocket.
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India failed to address the basic issues like population growth, unlike China. Just read this news publishhed in IE today. "Govt concerned over high rate of population growth":http://www.indianexpress.com/news/govt-concerned-over-high-rate-of-population-growth/655988/0
The government on Wednesday said the high rate of population growth, particular in states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, was a matter of "serious concern" as it had an adverse impact on the available national resources.
Moving a motion in the Lok Sabha on population stabilisation in the country, Health and Family Welfare Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) in central Indian states, including Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, was almost double that of the desired levels.
"Azad said India had only 2.4 per cent of land mass of the world, but accounted for 17 per cent of the world population. "The population is still growing, but our resources are decreasing," he added.
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The idealistic village life is false otherwise people would not be migrating from the countryside to the cities or even going overseas.
Land Reclamation will primarily be used for building high density new future cities in India. India needs lots of "Hong Kong" style cities which can be SEZ's and models of efficient governance, plus they will yield large amounts of export revenue for the central government. Building a New city dodges issues like Slum Rehab etc..
The problem's occur when too much reliance is put on the Indian government. Perhaps in the future the Indian government may become efficient like Singapore but in the medium term it's unlikely. Waiting for government to improve the place will basically give you the same situation as today. The answer is to let private enterprise step in and fill the holes. Almost all the good things in India today are being built by the private sector, the government has proven itself to be incompotent, so they need to step out of the way and allow Indian private companies to build India.
India's fertility rate and population growth rate is falling dramatically, India only grows at 1.3%/year now down from 2.6% in the 70's/80's. India will level off by 2035-2040 at around 1.5 Billion then start falling again. China's one child policy artificially created a demographic bubble which will cause social problems for them in the future. It's better to accept natural growth and stablization through education etc.
The 2.4% of land mass but 17% of the population is a very deceptive statistic, since many parts of the Earth cannot support a lot of people. India has more acres of arable land and has the potential to grow more food than any other country (even more than China). Infact countries like Japan and UK are more overpopulated but due to their industrial wealth they are able to import food. Russia with more than 6 million sq miles of land and 150 million people would not be considered as underpopulated as most of Siberian Tundra is hardly hospitable. There is a good reason why few people live in 3 million square miles of the Sahara Desert for example. 50% of the produce in India is wasted due to lack of cold storage and yield/acre is half of that of the U.S. according to the UN FAO statistics. So India can triple it's effective food production.
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Your comment, “The idealistic village life is false otherwise people would not be migrating from the countryside to the cities or even going overseas”. People do not leave village because village life is false. We (system in countries like India) force them to leave village as you failed to provide even the basic necessities in those villages (e.g justice, basic health care, education etc). Many younger and inexperienced people leave village simply lured by over-advertised city life and majority of them end up with a pathetic life in slums in cities. Many fall in trap and start believing that it is their moral obligation to praise city-life, mainly among his fellow villagers. In a decent country many prosperous and/or educated people prefer to live in outskirts and villages.
The duty of any government is to govern, NOT to run business. On the other hand, if any country allows business people to run the country it will be a disaster. That’s why many highly developed countries like Switzerland, Sweden etc keep the basic and most important issues like public transport, health care in government hands and keep government transparent. Anyone can study the fate of British public transport or American health care (and public transport) after it was handed over to private sector. There are too many examples world wide (including the recent financial debacle) why private sector must not be given free hand. Private sector need to be strictly monitored to adhere to basic ethics and paly its due role for the country/world.
Every country needs to maintain a dynamic population. As per UN report, India can sustain only about 200 million people if India (average) wants quality of life as per US. Cities like Kolkata and Mumbai have infrastructure to sustain about 1.5 million people (to have decent quality of life) while they have about 12 million now.
Moreover, we, general people in the world need to consume less and put less pressure on the earth. Our resources are not unlimited and we need to behave ourselves on how we use our resources. We need to put a break on our industrial development and pause a bit to think. We need to develop greener technology (also comes under knowledge based industry) and use technology in a sustainable way. In a country like India, many poor people were coerced to buy mobile phone while two third of the Indian population does not have access to proper sanitation even today (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7593567/India-has-more-mobile-phones-than-toilets-UN-report.html). Electronic waste is a major problem for many developing countries, including India.
No industry in the world behave morally, unless they are forced to. This is more true for third world countries like India. That’s why even most democratic and free countries like US, EU are setting up new laws to regulate its industries (banking, health care, immigration etc).
If corporate houses are put in charge, they will always ask for growth, growth in consumption, which ultimately increase their profit. One can see the movie by Al Gore, “inconvenient truth”. Many companies talk about sustainable development. But their number is far too less and majority of them only talk about sustainability, hardly follow what they say in public.
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200 million is not correct at all. Read this report about optimum population:
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
India's sustainable is 557 million (overpopulated by 594 million), but UK's sustainable level is 15 million, overpopulated by 45 million. China is sustainable at 611 million, over by 715 million. Japan's sustainable level is 19 million, over by 108 million. U.S. has a sutainable level of 148 million, over by 154 million.
Regardless you live with you have, killing half the population is not an answer. Many "first world" countries are grossly overpopulated as well, however it's masked by their wealth.
Corporations have to be heavily regulated, by the bulk of the GDP has to run by the private sector otherwise you get unsustainable welfare states like in Europe which will either have to cut spending or go bankrupt.
If income disparity rises too much, then raise taxes on the rich until it's at a reasonable level. BTW, India has much lower income disparity than China & U.S. and way less than Brazil/Mexico as measured by the GINI index. Check the CIA world factbook to verify:
http://www.cia.gov.
I won't put too much trust in Al Gore, he owns two giant houses and consumes 10 times more energy per capita than the average American. At least if he put a sincere effort in limiting his consumption I could give him some credibility.
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Don't get conned by some of the so called Western Environmental elite. They consider the rise of India and China as the biggest threat to their global dominance. They would like nothing better for the West to continue consuming and producing at it's current rate and have India remain poor. As a cover, they use environmentalism as an excuse to say why India should not Industrialize. When India becomes a rich country, it will be easier to protect the environment. Industrialization is a long and dirty process as it was for U.S., Europe and Japan. India should try it's best to avoid some of the earlier mistakes with it's advantage of hindsight, but should not cloak itself in the socialist moral superiority like before while leaving it's people poor.
Their real intent is to prevent India from being like them, while they can continue to consume heavily.
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Your data on sustainability does not seem to be true. I could not check your source as blog moderators has removed it.
“Here is one source from a reputed US university professor on that subject, HOW MANY AMERICANS CAN THE EARTH SUPPORT?” by Dr. David Pimentel, Cornell University : http://www.populationpress.org/essays/essay-pimentel.html
“About 0.5 hectares (1.2 acres) of cropland per person is required to provide a diverse diet similar to that desired by the average American and European. At present, this amount of land is still available in the United States for its present population. In contrast, worldwide, only 0.27 ha of cropland per person remains for food production. Since land is a finite resource, available cropland per person will continue to decline, both worldwide and in the United States, as the human population increases. Urban sprawl, highways, and industries also spread and cover more land. Finally, a substantial amount of fertile cropland is lost to erosion by wind and water every year. Some 10 million hectares of cropland is being eroded and abandoned each year throughout the world”.
Previously it was thought to be 6 billion as THE limit for global population. But we all know that we have crossed that mark. It all depends on quality of life that we attach while doing such calculation.
Your (BigOil) assessment that “I won't put too much trust in Al Gore, he owns two giant houses and consumes 10 times more energy per capita than the average American” does not make sense. Personal behaviour of a person does not make the facts about global warming and what he (Al Gore) says wrong or less credible. It makes perfect sense even when a smoker says that “smoking is injurious to health”. It is immaterial whether Al Gore personally follows what he preaches, but his assessment and facts about what he says perfectly makes sense, backed by solid research data from reputed scientists.
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India’s total foreign exchange reserve (as on 2010) is about USD 245 billion (24500 crores USD, i.e 12.25 lakh crores INR). http://www.topnews.in/india-s-foreign-exchange-reserves-grows-741-million-2252031.
Now consider the cost to implement only one single project India likes to undertake to provide the very basic facility to its younger citizens. Keep in mind that 129 countries already have undertaken that before India. Yes, I am talking about “right to education” bill. The estimated cost for first 5 years is Rs 5 lakhs crore (INR). The 13th Finance Commission has already set aside only Rs 24,068 crore of additional funds to help the states implement the law. As I remember, the sharing of cost with different states will be about 65:35. Majority of states have no clue how to get the remaining 35% money. On top of that, we all know how cost over-run is a very common issue in India. In that sense, half of the total money India managed to save after two decades of economic liberalization and “phenomenal growth” will be gone to implement only one project that will bring India to any other country that have decent education and fulfill its minimum obligation towards its citizen as a democracy. Now think about other basic infrastructural needs India has (e.g public health care, road, administrative, police reform etc.). I am not that pessimist about the money part, but I am really skeptical about the political will, and, moreover, ability of our leadership (both political and otherwise) to deliver. One good example is Golden quadrangular road project initiated by NDA Govt (more specifically under AB Bajpayee). Now that very important infrastructural project is all but dead without achieving its goal. We spend huge money on mostly useless (in the long run and also from poverty eradication point of view), populist (of course, for vote bank politics) projects like Gramin Jorgar Youjona ( officially known as “national rural employment guarantee scheme and have ONLY 6% success rate). Such programs NEVER reduce poverty but help maintaining poverty at a “tolerable” level.
I am convinced that India will never, I repeat- NEVER, attain the level of prosperity USA or western European countries enjoy today. We can exclude majority of Middle Eastern countries from this, as no sane people consider those as either “developed” or democratic or “educated” countries.
I also believe that it will be very hard for these (US-EU) prosperous countries to maintain their present high quality of living for long. In the mean time prosperity of India will increase marginally (on macro level, NOT for few people in cities) and that will never match EU-US, as of today. We can remember the quote of famous British philosopher cum scientist, Bertrand Russell when someone asked him (just after India got freedom), if India can ever attain same prosperity of Britain. He replied something like this, “Britain needs almost the entire world to get the wealth for the prosperity we see today. But unfortunately we have only one world”!
At the same time happiness does not depend on economic prosperity. In that sense, I do believe that India can become a very happy country, for majority of its people, if proper policies are developed and implemented.
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It seems to be assumed often in this blog that just because China is a communist (by name), authoritarian government, this means the government and elites automatically do not care about villagers, the common folk etc and care only about accumulating wealth. While this may be true to an extent for developers and local/provincial leaders, this does not seem mostly to be the case at the national level for several reasons:
1. extensive efforts and money have been used in transfering wealth from the rich east coast to the impoverished and largely rural west side even at the cost of bitter resentment from eastern city dwellers.
2. recent laws and legislation have aimed at empowering villagers and rural folk against developers and urban elites again, to the disgruntlement of urban folk.
3. Confucianism, which is highly influential in China states that a government needs to be morally upright and care for its people in order to be legitimate. for nearly 2000 years, authoritarianism has been regulated by the confucian belief in a series of moral constraints and obligations the ruler owes to his/her people. this perhaps explains partly why China behaves more responsibility to its people than to other authoritiarian states not bound by a similar religious/moral code.
~ just writing this to demonstrate that authoritarianism in China isn't as oppressive as many, particularly in India, make it out to be. although obviously there still are a lot of problems (human rights abuses, local corruption, etc)
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I forgot to reply to BigOil’s post#79.
Industries do NOT have any country or race. They worship anyone, any country where they make money. Nowadays India and China is the darling boy for them, as emerging market. It is beneficial for them to provoke India and China to consume more of their products and help reducing their production cost, even if that means polluting local environment , or grossing ignoring labor laws (minimum wages etc), or failing to provide decent working condition (acceptable to their country of origin). They hardly care where the manufacturing units are located; so long it gives them more profit. Today famous, so-called American company, General Motors (GM) make more profit from China (and India) than they do in US (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/02/general-motors-china-sales). Majority of their manufacturing jobs are now overseas, and the situation will deteriorate in US in coming years (http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/gm-offshore-outsourcing-us-jobs). Although they do not say this fact while advertising their products in US and wrongly promote the idea that it is still an American company, who cares for America! In that sense, it is beneficial for such companies to promote pollution and so-called economic prosperity (of their customer base) in those countries to sale more of their products and produce cheaper products to compete in other markets.
Whenever we have the discussion on destruction of forest, environmental pollution etc, we (people from countries like India) say that western countries destroyed their own environment (flora and fauna) and so they have no moral right to preach others. We conveniently forget that majority of those “crimes” (as per present laws in many developed countries) happened long before we understood the problems associated with destruction of nature or pollution of our environment or elimination of a particular animal/plant. Now we know about that. Now these countries are very careful and aggressive to take care of what they have and try to re-establish past (so far possible). Will not it be a costly and stupid act to commit the same mistakes others did? Two wrongs do not make anything right. More importantly, destruction of nature, pollution of environment does more damage to its immediate vicinity than someone else living thousands of miles away.
Taking care of its own citizen is NOT any socialist crime, as many might think. In fact that is THE duty of any national government. And the strength of any country is and should be measured on how it takes care of its minority population and weakest people. Just like the strength of a chain is measured by its weakest link, not the strongest one. The success of India (or China) should be measured on how best they can take care of the people in the lowest strata of the society, NOT by the numbers or the ways billionaires like Ambani brothers are treated there.
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