Comments on: Can Gurcharan Das Learn from Krugman?

By: admin

admin — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:13:15 +0000

What is interesting to me is the argument of “the government is the enemy” versus “we need a responsible, responsive government that works.” Those laws benefit somebody, usually those in power to dispense favors to get around those laws, hence they’ve never been changed. Also, in India the socially powerful class and the politically powerful class don’t always intersect, and a lot of the torturous bureaucracy, odd and frankly lawless governance is probably to do with that. It will be interesting to see if anything changes with this election, however minor that change is.

By: Kaushiki Sanyal

Kaushiki Sanyal — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:28:35 +0000

Shashwati, you may call be one of those people who “benefitted” from government subsidies in India. However, I agree with Gurcharan Das about many things. For long, the government has stifled entreprenaurship with most ridiculous laws and red tape. Even a little bit of liberalisation helped India economically so much that we became a force to be reckoned with.

I oppose Government subsidies to higher education (although I have benefitted from it). Instead, we should have concentrated on primary education. If that had been taken care of at a war footing, a lot of our present problems could have been solved.

I also oppose government subsidies for LPG which is mostly used by relatively richer people.

On the other hand, law and order has to be dealth with by the government which it has failed quite miserably.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:11:30 +0000

Good point comic project. Its interesting that a lot of people who benefited from govt. policies post independence are the ones, or their children are the ones who criticize it the most.

By: The Comic Project

The Comic Project — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:32:43 +0000

Interesting viewpoints about role of government. The Indian point of view is getting increasingly romanticized by a lot of people, the meme that we grow despite our constraints, ingenuity and all that. While that is be true, our growth is probably more accident than design. Some good things were done by Governments in the last 15 years but by not forming a cohesive strategy and channelizing growth appropriately, we may be setting ourselves up for failures we may not be able to handle.

Of course, when we get out of it a few years later, this “rise from the ashes” will be romanticized again, without learning any lessons.