Growth is slipping, stocks are down 40 percent, and foreign stock market investors are fleeing. Businessmen blame the ruling coalition for failing to make reforms.
Eh... *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Most economic forecasts expect growth to slow to 7 percent -- a big drop for a country that needs to accelerate growth, not reduce it.
Even the most bullish on India are hard-pressed to recall any significant economic reforms made in the recent past. A plan to build 30 Special Economic Zones is virtually suspended because New Delhi has not sorted out how to acquire the necessary land, a major issue in both urban and rural India, without a major social and political upheaval.
Chetan Modi, head of Moody's India, says the increasingly high cost of doing business in India may force global investors who had set up base in India -- especially financial-services players -- to move to more affordable and efficient hubs, such as Singapore and Hong Kong.
In all fairness, this (July) article is part of a partnership with Businessweek, not original Spiegel content. Wonder if this stuff also appears in the German version.
+ zero (tolerance for) resistance from locals against (expulsions from their land for new) development (Exhibit A: China). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singur
The talks between the protesting farmers and the state government of West Bengal are a major news item here. I was thinking about diarying it, but in a way there's not much to say, beyond "this is the difference compared to China, in Shenzhen I've seen this dealt with very differently (and from a corporate point of view "more efficiently.")
Other major news items include the NSG decision, the jailing of the rich playboy son of a retired naval chief for killing 6 people while driving while drunk, and sundry local news about the need for more transport infrastructure.
It's not a diary, it's a book ;)
although an awful lot of people have been enthused by the politicians who promote India as a place to do business, I've read far too much about the unresovable problems associated with Indian bureaucracy, intransigence, indifference and corruption to believe the coutnry could ever truly leap forward as China has done.
You might say that means they have dodged the bullet of the real problems china has caused for itself (as you know, I predict it will implode within a decade), but India has chosen its own path to hell and is pursuing it vigorously. keep to the Fen Causeway
India's democracy is by no stretch of the imagination perfect, but it does function, and it can be lead to truly radical change on occasion. Witness Kerala, which was taken over by communists via the ballot box, who then ran an effectively socialist government for over ten years. They pushed through effective educational reform, tax reform, and land reform.
Horrible for entrenched business elites, but democratic nonetheless, and thus an example the business elites would rather ignore.
This kind of action is not possible in all places, but the very existence of democratic institutions in a country with degrees of family and tribal social organization unknown in the west, and thus with vast potential for coherent democratic agitation from the civil sphere, means that elites can't just push people around at will.
