India - A Window of Opportunity

Moreso today than in 1947, we have a tryst with destiny. Are we ready to shape our future?

I just read a very interesting article (via India Uncut), which was published some months back in the Bloomberg News (crossposted at IHT).

India Argues as Window of Opportunity Closes

Every modernizing society reaches a demographic inflection point where the returns from speedy -- and progressive -- economic policy-making rise exponentially. China was at that point in the early 1980s, and it made the most of it. India's clock has started ticking now.

The next 20 years are crucial. India can choose to act now and get rich, or its people can continue to argue, stay poor -- and become old. Indian policy makers can't continue to chew cud on state-asset sales, urban renewal, capital account convertibility and labor-market flexibility.

Vijay Kelkar, a former top bureaucrat in India's finance ministry, recently spelled out a pragmatic agenda for the government in his paper titled ``India's Economic Future: Moving Beyond State Capitalism.'' The paper, which Kelkar co-wrote with researcher Ajay Shah, makes suggestions that are as valuable as they are controversial. They include privatization of several government services, cash transfers to the poor, full currency convertibility and an end to exchange-rate targeting so as to make full use of monetary policy. ``This is our last chance,'' Kelkar said, presenting his paper in October last year. ``If we miss this opportunity, then we'll be in the dire straits of being a poor, aging country.''

Here is a presentation and the paper by Kelkar outlining what the Bloomberg article summarizes.

Also, some related papers:
- Connect and Catalyze
- Economic growth and India's future
- India - Strategies & Impacts
- India Rising - Faster Growth, Lower Indebtedness (World Bank)

All links above, except the last, are pdf files.

--
The Bloomber article refers to Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian (Reviews:1, 2, 3, 4. Excerpt: 1). I bought the book when I was in India earlier this year but have not started reading it yet. Late last year, I read the first 1/3rd of Sen's Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny and was very impressed with his eruditeness.

Both these books are definitely a must-read...some day I shall make the time to read these instead of books like New Sudden Fiction (which is a good book actually - it is a collection of short pieces (4-7 pages long, at most), which I started reading this week. The instant gratification provided by short pieces is good for someone like me who seems to suffer from a shorter and shorter attention span as I grow older and do not seem to have the time (patience?) lately to read for hours lately... oh woe!)