Now, this lady continues to hold both a ration card and a voter id card of her old home and NOT of either her new home (its in her name jointly with her son) or her employers home . Its been 2 years now and the lady recently voted in a booth of an area she does not live in anymore with no one questioning her. Did the SRA write to the Elec Commn. to cancel or transfer her voter id ? And did they inform the Rationing Office? This lady collects her kerosene entitlement from the ration shop as usual and then sells it in the open market.

Sure this lady makes a little extra money that is welcome relief and i dont blame her for not bothering to inform any regulatory authority. She (and i !!) probably figures they’ve given her enough grief of the past 30 odd years !

But net net, some really destitute family somewhere is missing out. And this is why its better to pay cash to the needy rather than spread the subsidy across the board !

What say Dr. Singh ??

Manmohan also wants the private companies to build public-private partnership in higher education, see his address in Goa:
http://pib.nic.in/release/rel_print_page.asp?relid=17488
I was there and was heavily disappointed. It appears like the government just wants to share responsibilities and not the taxes it collects. Where does the government money go? How is allowed to abdicate (if I may say that, since there are not visible results) all responsibilities?

As for agriculture there are too many people in it clamoring for an ever shrinking pie. If we build more metros and move to a more healthy rural:urban population ratio that would help. Sad it is that even today the best built cities are British.

Agreed. This thread once again raises the need for good governance even in the freest of economies. Infrastructure development has always been the government’s job, and most of us would prefer that it be the government’s only job.

When I think of how rural America started to advance economically after WWII, I can only attribute it to the Federal and state governments’ enterprise, such as the massive construction of roadways (Eisenhower’s Interstate initiative), heavy investment in power, huge subsidies to corporate America for relocating to rural areas, even to the extent of relaxing tax rules and envirnomental controls.

As bullish as I am about India, my biggest fear is that free market, unless aided and abetted by a good government, does not work in the long run.

Is there a successful modern economy that doesn’t have an entrenched government bureaucracy?

A real life example could be the pathetic situation of vidarba farmers committing suicide. Maharashtra government collects all sorts of taxes (read octroi, tolls etc.) from people in Mumbai. Where does the money go? Can I safely assume that the government does the worst management of money?

On the other hand, you can see the status of villages that have been adopted by corporates (e.g. ITC e-choupals and other IT companie’s initiatives). These villages have already started a growth trajectory.

It is widely in media circulation that we need thousand of crores as capital expenditure for development of infrastructure and welcome FDI in these areas. But till a time, a reasonable level of homogeneity is not reached vis-a-vis development of rural & urban areas. Right now, the balance is heavily skewed in favour of urban india, which, if not corrected, will cause large socio-economic disturbances in short to medium term.