Lessons from India's Voters

In my last column, I wrote about learning from China. The experience of other countries, especially those that share key characteristics with India, is obviously important as a guide for policymakers. But there are important lessons from India’s own experience. Democratic voting allows the individual experiences of citizens to be articulated, albeit in an aggregate and imprecise manner. Drawing the right lessons from India’s latest elections is vital.

The stock market seemed to conclude that the outcome in Uttar Pradesh was a bad one for India’s economic future. Since the UP state assembly election did nothing to consolidate the political position of the ruling party’s heir apparent, it may be that uncertainty and jockeying for position at the Centre will continue, both within the ruling party, and in the wider coalition. Capricious coalition partners and powerful ministers may continue to block or divert needed and potentially beneficial economic reforms.

More....

What Should India Learn From China?

Arguably, China’s successful embrace of one form of capitalism (“to get rich is glorious”) in 1978 ultimately played a role in steering India’s path of economic reform. Since then, China has often served as a benchmark for judging India’s progress, because it is the only other country that matches India in population size. Sorting out the lessons from China’s experience is always useful, beyond the comparison of the countries’ planning exercises, the subject of my last column.
What should India learn from China, and what should it not?

One should start by rejecting the political values of China’s regime. Suppressing the free expression of ideas, or the exercise of political voice, is not necessary for economic development, or even for political stability. India’s previous flirtations with such suppression were never associated with economic progress, and recent attempts to impose broad censorship of the internet are indicators of insecurity of the political elite, and nothing more. The notion that China’s authoritarianism has virtues (often part of the “Asian values” school of thought) to be copied by India must be totally rejected. Democracy is not incompatible with inclusive economic development.

More....

Diaspora, Development and Democracy

The title of this column is the title of a new book by Devesh Kapur, head of the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania. The book is about how Indians who have emigrated have influenced the country they left behind. It is a fascinating study, broad in scope and full of new insights. Kapur argues that the economic, political, social and cultural consequences of international migration imply a richer framework for thinking about globalisation and related ideas such as ‘openness’, than just focusing on movements of goods and capital. He asks, “Is a country with substantial trade, but with few citizens who move around the world, really more ‘open’ in a broader … sense than a country where trade is more limited but whose citizens live and travel internationally, thus remitting foreign exchange and ideas to a much greater extent?”

More...