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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   1598 thread views

Transnational Thursday for April 25, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Good points. India's fertility is anything but stable though. There's getting old before you get rich and then there's getting old before you're out of poverty. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?locations=IN

I have no problem with Modi personally, running such a big country democratically is a big ask. US democracy is not exactly high performance governance, how is anyone supposed to manage 4x the population with a small fraction of the wealth?

IMO India needs to follow the standard industrial route out of poverty. Special economic zones, foreign investment, light industry -> heavy industry -> high-tech industry and then services. Doing this in a democracy is very difficult, as you point out. Getting the tax and judiciary right is easy for autocracies, hard for democracies. Plus there's an excessive focus on IT and software. Software is all well and good but what about hardware? What about making the solar panels? Without manufacturing there's no firm base for development, skipping from agricultural to service-economy has never been done AFAIK. Vietnam has been on the right path and is pulling ahead.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=IN-VN

Agreed on all counts. There are zero real democracies that have managed a transition from poverty to wealth. They all grew as autocracies and converted to democracies once stable.

India is unlikely to become autocratic, but the current setup has too many checks and balances. I am a big proponent of reducing states rights and opening the judiciary (primarily by allowing fast track appointments for those who excel at standardized testing , setting targets for case clearance as part of promotions and limiting the supreme court to matters of constitution, rather than morality).

That's a good start. India has fair elections. Let those elected to the parliament choose the path for the nation. Too much beaurocracy is no good.

There are zero real democracies that have managed a transition from poverty to wealth.

Zero?

Iceland, Ireland and Finland come immediately to mind.

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