Worse Than Sania
So India’s the next superpower, eh? TN Ninan gives us a reality check:
The inescapable fact is that even today India accounts for only 2 per cent of the world’s GDP, less than 1 per cent of world trade, less than 1 per cent of global investment flows and an even smaller share of global technology breakthroughs — with 16 per cent of the world’s people.
While it is good to be optimistic and to be conscious about the country’s latent potential, and indeed to capitalise on recent positive trends, it would be dangerous to get into the mindset that says we have already arrived.
The distance to be covered between today’s reality and tomorrow’s potential was emphasised in bold relief this last week, with the release of UNDP’s latest Human Development Report. At a rank of 127, India is still among the laggards. And despite the front-ranking rate of 7 per cent economic growth, we are making precious little progress in education, health care, sanitation and other elements of social infrastructure.
Most other international rankings also show India in a poor light, whether it is the World Economic Forum’s competitiveness report, or Transparency International’s corruption perception index. In none of them do we match Sania Mirza’s global rank of 42, and she to her credit is likely to move up the numbers ladder faster than the country.
To point all these out is treated as non-patriotic is some circles, but to not do so would be to ensure, in Ninan’s words, that “we ignore the hard work that has to be done today, and the tough decisions that have to be taken.” Good things have happened in the last decade-and-a-half, but, as I’d written here, a lot still remains to be done. Until every citizen of India has economic and personal freedom, we should focus on building the road ahead, and not on celebrating the footpath behind.
Our inability to create basic sanitary conditions rankles as the most glaring failure no civilised country can ignore. The condition of people living along ’sewage canals’ in Kolkata used to shock me and I could never get used to it even though I lived there for a number of years. There is a similar sight along train lines when you travel from Mumbai to Pune or, for that matter in any of the bigger cities. Inner cities are only marginally better. Many towns have grown arbitarily and plans are approved in exchange for the smallest bribes and there is usually no drainage in place at all. Well, I guess everyone knows these things…
Comment by Nanda Kishore — September 10, 2005 @ 12:01 pm
Realistic self-appraisal is tough (maybe impossible), but the alternative is delusion. I know of no successful economy built thereupon.
Comment by PacRim Jim — September 10, 2005 @ 4:40 pm
Older but Wiser??
We are one of the oldest civilisations which has successfully managed to be if not the most populous the second most populous in the world.
Its interesting to note we have become the 10th largest economy in the world with 390 million people living on less than $1 a day!!
Comment by Mani Pulimood — September 23, 2005 @ 11:32 am