Indian Economics Thread II

[Ash46]

This... This might actually be doable, with the accelerating rate at which US infrastructure is collapsing.

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Finally, a realistic development goal for India!

Btw why isn't usa investing in infrastructure then. I mean being the reserve currency can afford them enough room to carry out these investments, shouldn't it?

 

[antiterror13]

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It isn't really enough for the aspirations that it has for itself. For comparison China's is 45% and was around 50% when it had a GDP similar to india of today. Add to that incompetence, corruption, funds used for political appeasement which are non productive in the long term etc and much isn't left

Perhaps not a good idea to compare it with China or any other East Asian countries .. just different culture and mindset ... perhaps with similar South Asian countries would be better

 

[xypher]

India's savings rate is close to 30%, which is not bad. Is it not being leveraged properly?

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This. Democracy is the biggest scam sold by the west to the third world.

Taiwan, SK, Japan (Meiji, US Occupation), Singapore, China, Germany (Bismark, US occuption) all did their "catch-up" to middle-high income status under authoritarian / semi-authoritarian rule.

The exceptions were US and GB, two countries that were blessed with the best geographical situations amongst their peers.

GB also rose to power through authoritarian rule - early constitutional monarchy still gave huge leverage to the ruling monarchs allowing them to unilaterally veto parliament decisions.

 

[Ash46]

GB also rose to power through authoritarian rule - early constitutional monarchy still gave huge leverage to the ruling monarchs allowing them to unilaterally veto parliament decisions.

Shall we comfortably ignore the industrial revolution, superior methods of warfare, naval superiority, alliances, role that it's companies such as east india company played , tributary states that supplied them manpower to wage wars and several other factors that allowed them to become a great power and dumb it down to authoritarian rule?

Also no monarchs didn't have much power. The royalists and monarch lost the British civil war(1642-1651) and their power were given to the parliamentarians (who won) which certainly didn't want interference from the kings and queens. The last veto by a monarch in uk iirc was in 1708 and that was regarding Scottish militia.

I would be happy to know which bills and proposals did monarch vetoed that resulted them in gaining superiority if you can cite them .

 

[xypher]

Shall we comfortably ignore the industrial revolution, superior methods of warfare, naval superiority, alliances, role that it's companies such as east india company played , tributary states that supplied them manpower to wage wars and several other factors that allowed them to become a great power and dumb it down to authoritarian rule?

The point is that all of these things were achieved when GB was not as democratic as today, meaning that there are very few examples of democratic and liberal countries rising towards the top from bottom including some of the main democratic preachers of today who seem to equate democracy & liberalism with economic progress when the history proves otherwise. All those Western countries rose through colonialism & exploitation which led to amassment of capital and, later, industrial revolution as people started moving up the Maslow pyramid, not because they adopted democracy & liberalism.

There are upsides and downsides to both democratic and authoritarian government regimes but for developing countries the ability to make quick and decisive actions when required is very important imo because they are fighting for scrapes at that stage and are quite limited in what they can offer to get the necessary investments or lure in manufacturing. Sure, there is always a risk of country falling into an oligarchic dictatorship but there are likewise many examples of stagnant & poor democracies with high levels of corruption - Mongolia, Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, plenty of African & Latin American states, etc. However, I did not account for one important aspect that you mentioned on the previous page - India's diverse landscape with many linguistic, religious & ethic issues where classic autocratic system might quickly lead to failure especially if something like BJP takes the power so maybe guardrails offered by democratic systems are necessary for India. Or, better yet, India should develop its own government system (like China did) that would both accommodate the upsides their current system gives but also allow for quicker decision-making needed for development.

 

[Ash46]

A

The point is that all of these things were achieved when GB was not as democratic as today, meaning that there are very few examples of democratic and liberal countries rising towards the top from bottom including some of the main democratic preachers of today who seem to equate democracy & liberalism with economic progress when the history proves otherwise. All those Western countries rose through colonialism & exploitation which led to amassment of capital and, later, industrial revolution as people started moving up the Maslow pyramid, not because they adopted democracy & liberalism.

There are upsides and downsides to both democratic and authoritarian government regimes but for developing countries the ability to make quick and decisive actions when required is very important imo because they are fighting for scrapes at that stage and are quite limited in what they can offer to get the necessary investments or lure in manufacturing. Sure, there is always a risk of country falling into an oligarchic dictatorship but there are likewise many examples of stagnant & poor democracies with high levels of corruption - Mongolia, Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, plenty of African & Latin American states, etc. However, I did not account for one important aspect that you mentioned on the previous page - India's diverse landscape with many linguistic, religious & ethic issues where classic autocratic system might quickly lead to failure especially if something like BJP takes the power so maybe guardrails offered by democratic systems are necessary for India. Or, better yet, India should develop its own government system (like China did) that would both accommodate the upsides their current system gives but also allow for quicker decision-making needed for development.

Agree with everything you said.

 

[Ash46]

To expand on that I beleive democracy was never meant for a country to achieve high growth honestly. Authoritative systems tend to swing both extremes. You can have a visionary leader who would be able to set the country on path to developement or you can have a corrupt one who would exploit the country to no end, undermining institutional and social capital to make sure his rule remains firm. One might argue that since the days of brutal colonialism are long gone, it may only be authoritative govt that could afford undeveloped nations to compete with the developed ones. Such systems place a lot of responsibilities on the leader at the helm. On the other hand democracy tend to swing a bit around the mean. It might not allow for idiots to do a very huge damage but the checks also won't allow a visionary to achieve very rapid growth.

China has put a good system in place which has enough room to take the positive aspects of both the systems and I beleive that is the way to go. But alas the institutional inertia of countries is so massive it's quite difficult to change the system unless something very big happens. I mean just take the USA. They don't really have democracy in the traditional sense. Their system is based on plurality instead of majority. Garrymandering is not only legal but abused .
And about inertia, just take gun laws. They say it's unconstitutional because well a bunch of people 3 centuries ago said so. It's tough to change the system, especially in these modern times when even the bottom of the society ( who historically led the revolutions)has enough access to food , cheap entertainment and so on.

 

[In4ser]

India's savings rate is close to 30%, which is not bad. Is it not being leveraged properly?

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This. Democracy is the biggest scam sold by the west to the third world.

Taiwan, SK, Japan (Meiji, US Occupation), Singapore, China, Germany (Bismark, US occuption) all did their "catch-up" to middle-high income status under authoritarian / semi-authoritarian rule.

The exceptions were US and GB, two countries that were blessed with the best geographical situations amongst their peers.

They were able to exploit the labor and resources of the natives/colonies instead to power development while Asia had to strong arm its own domestic population instead

 

[MortyandRick]

While I might agree with the sentiments but there's a lot of nuances that one must consider.
1. Almost all the countries you mentioned are quite homogenic ( I know there's 50 minorities in China and their total number would be more than 100 million along with quite a lot of differences between the hans itself like hakka but still). If not culturally then atleast they have a written language that unites 80-90% of the country ( phonetic pronounciation may vary). India's biggest spoken language is Hindi( which itself has too many variations like bhojpuri,maithili etc) doesn't even cover half the country despite the biggest two states UP Bihar lying in that region. Geographically it might span 30-40% at max.
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2. You are also forgetting the us help and aid many of these countries received( with the exception of China and maybe Singapore. Don't know about taiwan, you may tell me about the if usa helped taiwan)
3. And while these countries clearly industrialised while being authoritarian but there is a survivorship bias there. Plenty of countries in Africa being run by dictatorship, they aren't publishing world beating growth. Myanmar fell to military coup a few years ago, they aren't growing at 10% + rate are they. Number of SEA countries have had military coups ( thailand etc.) They aren't the powerhouse similar to sk, Japan etc. Portugal was until 1974 a dictatorship, there wages are extremely low and they arent a powerhouse due to their authoritarianism in western circles.
Plenty of coups and dictators in South America happened too( I know there was huge role of usa but besides that) and they weren't developed during those reigns..

All I am trying to say is governing a nation is complex and it's naive to just say that if we were to switch from one form to another we miraculously would develop.

Appreciate your honest analysis.

I wonder if Modi is deliberately trying to scapegoat Muslims and uniting India against China as a way to further consolidate an authoritarian government to push through unpopular changes? I mean he just arrested Rahul Gandhi so perhaps he's thinking the same the India needs more authoritarianism?

 

[Africablack]

To expand on that I beleive democracy was never meant for a country to achieve high growth honestly. Authoritative systems tend to swing both extremes. You can have a visionary leader who would be able to set the country on path to developement or you can have a corrupt one who would exploit the country to no end, undermining institutional and social capital to make sure his rule remains firm. One might argue that since the days of brutal colonialism are long gone, it may only be authoritative govt that could afford undeveloped nations to compete with the developed ones. Such systems place a lot of responsibilities on the leader at the helm. On the other hand democracy tend to swing a bit around the mean. It might not allow for idiots to do a very huge damage but the checks also won't allow a visionary to achieve very rapid growth.

China has put a good system in place which has enough room to take the positive aspects of both the systems and I beleive that is the way to go. But alas the institutional inertia of countries is so massive it's quite difficult to change the system unless something very big happens. I mean just take the USA. They don't really have democracy in the traditional sense. Their system is based on plurality instead of majority. Garrymandering is not only legal but abused .
And about inertia, just take gun laws. They say it's unconstitutional because well a bunch of people 3 centuries ago said so. It's tough to change the system, especially in these modern times when even the bottom of the society ( who historically led the revolutions)has enough access to food , cheap entertainment and so on.

Agreed.

Authoritarianism is a high risk/high reward system, democracy is a low risk/low reward system.