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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Catchphrases are easy, but till social indicators don’t improve across sections of the population, no model of growth is complete or justifiable.
Editor's note: For a while now, debates on development in India have been flush with suggestions of “models”. In 2014, when Narendra Modi was being prepared as India’s prime minister, a media blitzkrieg was unleashed on the so-called “Gujarat model”. The corporate sector, right-wing economists and a section of liberal writers lapped it up. Leading the pack were economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya. Their focus was to “prove” that the Gujarat model was superior to the Kerala model, of which their bête noire Amartya Sen was a votary. The “Sen-Bhagwati debate” consumed much newsprint and bandwidth in 2014. But seven years later, there is recognition that the claims on the “Gujarat model” were nothing but political rhetoric. Gujarat was just one of the many fast-growing states in India; its industrial growth was based on the covert and overt transfer of massive amounts of public resources to private corporates; its levels of poverty were unacceptably high; and its social sector record was appalling. Gujarat was nothing but an exemplar of the perils of crony capitalism. Today, no one talks of the Gujarat …
Catchphrases are easy, but till social indicators don’t improve across sections of the population, no model of growth is complete or justifiable.
Editor's note: For a while now, debates on development in India have been flush with suggestions of “models”. In 2014, when Narendra Modi was being prepared as India’s prime minister, a media blitzkrieg was unleashed on the so-called “Gujarat model”. The corporate sector, right-wing economists and a section of liberal writers lapped it up. Leading the pack were economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya. Their focus was to “prove” that the Gujarat model was superior to the Kerala model, of which their bête noire Amartya Sen was a votary. The “Sen-Bhagwati debate” consumed much newsprint and bandwidth in 2014. But seven years later, there is recognition that the claims on the “Gujarat model” were nothing but political rhetoric. Gujarat was just one of the many fast-growing states in India; its industrial growth was based on the covert and overt transfer of massive amounts of public resources to private corporates; its levels of poverty were unacceptably high; and its social sector record was appalling. Gujarat was nothing but an exemplar of the perils of crony capitalism. Today, no one talks of the Gujarat …
Chinese diplomats to India are saying all the right things for Indian ears, but Beijing’s policy actions are moving in the opposite direction.
The country's fighter jet roadmap rests on imported propulsion, leaving its military plans hostage to cost shocks, delays and geopolitics.
Millions of enumerators working for the country’s first-ever fully digital census are relying on an app so choppy that many have to go back to pen and paper.
Chinese diplomats to India are saying all the right things for Indian ears, but Beijing’s policy actions are moving in the opposite direction.
The country's fighter jet roadmap rests on imported propulsion, leaving its military plans hostage to cost shocks, delays and geopolitics.
Millions of enumerators working for the country’s first-ever fully digital census are relying on an app so choppy that many have to go back to pen and paper.
