Pranab Bardhan, a professor of mine at UC Berkeley, whom we have met before here (see Crouching Tiger, Lumbering Elephant, and Pranab Bardhan on the Indian Economy, for instance) has an excellent article in the Boston Review titled “What Makes a Miracle: Some myths about the Rise of China and India.” (Hat tip: Yuvaraj Galada.)
He states the standard view explaining the rapid growth of the two countries:
What explains this strikingly rapid growth? The answer that continues to dominate public discussion in the United States runs along the following lines: …

Nothing new about the communists being pro-poor. They make people poor whereever they find a way. Today India is suffering the effects of commie policies. Today, 29th Sept, the commies have struck again in India crippling the transportation system. One day’s loss of production and productivity will add about a few million people to the ranks of the poor. How so you may ask? Simple, there are people at the margin. When the country grows poorer by a little amount, the people who were at the margin suffer the consequences …

Continuing on where I left off the last time time, let’s once again quote Mr Bardhan:
In a state like Delhi, for instance, can any private power distributor without an established work force be able to carry out electrification?
The answer to that is of course no. No distributor, private or public, can carry out electrification without an established workforce. But if that question was intended to demonstrate that only the government can have an established workforce, that is patently false. One doesn’t quite know where to begin …

Continuing from where I left off the last time, I quote again Mr A B Bardhan:
I am against privatisation of the state electricity boards. I simply do not understand the merits of the decision of setting up state regulatory commissioners even as private distributors increase costs repeatedly. In a state like Delhi, for instance, can any private power distributor without an established work force be able to carry out electrification?
I am not sure what it is about Delhi that makes it so unique in the whole universe with regards to …

The June 2nd Business Standard carried an opinion by Mr A B Bardhan, Secretary of the Communist Party of India, on the question “Should the disinvestment ministry be scrapped?” He said,
Even Lord Keynes would not have approved of disinvestment! Even he believed that there are some areas the government should not step out of. … Disinvestment means privatizing profits and nationalizing losses…. Profit making public sector units should not be privatized for two main reasons. First, because they are major contributors for taxes, and, second, they …

In an Indian Express article by Vijay Kelkar (Advisor to the Finance Minister) and Ajay Shah (Consultant, Department of economic affairs) ponder the question Why is this a very happy Diwali? (Oct 2003) Their answer is REFORMS. It is an interesting article and it belongs to the same class as the series of articles that Arun Shourie wrote around mid-August regarding the rise of the Indian economy.
The article by Kelkar and Shah essentially tells us that the Indian economy is not doing badly and …