If I have to blame one thing and only one thing, I will spare the Indian politician and blame the "babu-giri", Indian Civil Services, which is still modeled around its colonial predecessor. These are people recruited in their 20s and have a lifetime appointment in the system. Some are wise enough to get foreign education when possible, but most live in this bureaucratic bubble, and methodically eke their fiefdoms. These guys are the policy wonks, district level executives and every thing in between, and they do not have one frigging Idea, how the private sector works. They are worshipers of process and people are not in the picture. This culture permeates to every level, a culture of gatekeepers and fiefdoms, from the Secretary to PM to the peon in the municipal office.
India was called hope of Asia in 50s. The hope and promise was nothing new, and the delivery was never there.
I've always maintained that India can't change without a complete overhaul of the bureaucratic system. I've seen this up close. The thing is so damn inefficient that I can't even joke about it.
That article is highly one sided and too radical. What would you do after abolishing the IAS? What would it be replaced with? Is that going to end all the evil in India? The diversity and complexity in India is so huge that every policy decision needs to be considered from multiple points of view before implementing. India is now in a position were it has to manage the aspiration of both the new middle and upper middle class who aspire for things which developed countries have and also at the same time cater to the needs of more than half its population who are below poverty lines. People who complain usually would not have a good solution or are probably too far away from the ground reality.
>>That article is highly one sided and too radical.
Not at all. If anything, It is In fact too soft for the problems IAS system continues to cause.
>>What would you do after abolishing the IAS? What would it be replaced with?
That's a good question. This has been studied at length by many many brilliant minds. One of the bright minds (an EX-IAS officer) that I know who studied this at length is Sanjeev Sabhlok (https://twitter.com/sabhlok). Sanjeev has a rigourously refined solution. Highly detailed implementation plan that is so detailed that even a junior IAS officer can understand. Please visit http://www.sabhlokcity.com/tag/ias/ for general reading and his book "Breaking Free of Nehru"
>>People who complain usually would not have a good solution or are probably too far away from the ground reality.
One does not need always need to know the solution to recognize a problem. Recognizing and acknowledging the problem is first of the many steps towards solving it.
>>Is that going to end all the evil in India?
This is a necessary but not sufficient condition. No one thing will end all evil in India. There are ways to end, but not one silver bullet.
This seems like an outdated story (seems like it's a 2001 article).
(I'm ignoring fundamental problems like corruption etc. below)
As far as the anti-foreign investment sentiment goes, it sounds repulsive on face value, but those of us (Indians) who've lived in the US would want a Walmart (just as an example) destroying all the mom and pop shops? I think a cautious approach for foreign investment is the way to go, the income inequalities in India is already pretty bad, opening the floodgates without adequate measures of certain protectionist policies (not blanket protectionism) would make it worse. We need to realize that India is too big a market for multi-national companies to ignore completely; the Indian govt. should have the upper hand in any deal. And it should strike a deal which is in the interest of the Indian people.
As a person who's shopped at both walmart and local "mom and pop shops", yes. We also want Uber or Ola destroying the local taxi industry, and providing safer and better service to consumers. We want Flipkart or Amazon destroying local retail, Toyota destroying local automotive, etc.
Big scary (sometimes foreign) players only manage to "destroy" a local industry when the local industry is failing to satisfy local customers.
You're speaking neither as an Indian national, an Indian shopowner, or even an employee of a low-margin local business in India.
I understand that people living elsewhere have perspectives on this, as do ex-pats living in India, but those aren't the people who are principally harmed by this. It's very easy to conclude that this is "worth it" when you're only benefiting from it[0] not the one feeling the pain.
[0] 'As a person [from the US] who's shopped at both walmart and local "mom and pop shops" [in India]'
I agree, but my point is that it should be done conservatively. And you're ignoring the plight of people employed by these companies entirely (which could be you).
Here's Uber in the news just lately: http://fortune.com/2015/09/02/uber-lawsuit/
One might disagree with this valuation, let's assume it's 1/10 th of it. Can they provide health insurance to their drivers? Absolutely yes, but they're solely interested in revenue and being profitable. I don't want to sound like an Uber basher, this is true for most companies; they operate in their own self interest which they arguably should. It's up to the govt. to act as a counter balance to blatantly unjust policies adopted by companies.
I'm not ignoring them. I simply believe that the benefits to consumers drastically outweigh the harms to producers in every case I've ever seen. I've also observed that in practice that politicians basically don't care about consumers at all.
Also, the "plight" of Uber employees described in that article is that Uber gave them gigs better than their other alternatives, making them better off. But now they are trying to grab more money from Uber via politics. That's a flaw with the political system, not Uber.
I see the gist of this article (which is positive) but some "hunches" of writer are conveniently converted in to facts. Take this for example: "They have to race from one end to the other of warehouses the size of 16 football fields."
Has she ever been inside a warehouse? Or worked at a warehouse? Or have a friend who works there? Sure those warehouses are indeed huge. Not one but multiple football fields long, at least for large retailers. Amabots or selectors or pickers (politically incorrect term but it is often used within warehouses) work in zones or areas. And they work in their zones and areas for months before they are asked to move to a different selection zone. Each zone is the size of roughly two-to-three decent size living rooms. Lets say if item A for an order is located at the southern end of a warehouse and item B is at the northern end then a single selector does not run back and forth to pick those two items. One selector picks item A and then the shipping box (or a pre-shipping plastic box) is routed via electric conveyors to southern end and another selector picks item B. Watch a video on Youtube.
Obviously there are time constraints because that is the nature of the job. A company can ship out items fast only if selectors will pick/select/process them fast enough from the shelf and place them in to the conveying box.
Now most of these people are not "directly" employed by the warehouse retailer (Amazon or Best Buy or Walmart). Third party staffing companies bring them on board. Sure imho that is a dirty business money-saving tactic to keep the liabilities off of you ledger.
Point being. It is very convenient to rant online these days and shove your broken opinions without doing a proper research. And heck I am just a happy consumer who loves her Prime shipping.
I would think increasing efficiencies and growing the economy would be what's in the best interest of the Indian people. If India had become the 2nd or 3rd biggest economy, along with China, would the average person be better off?
Jim you really don't get India, do you. The intelligent, educated and high tech India that you talk about and are surprised about has actually existed for ten thousand years now. It has nothing to do with modernity, its just that quest for knowledge is deep rooted in that culture. You mention India where phones don't work and traffic jams are commonplace, in other words, India where its inconvenient to lead a modern life, even thats existed for ten thousand years, even during the harshest days of starvation under British rule Indians were reasonably happy and not many people revolted for 250 years (they had to be prodded to do so for the last 50 years). In a way, they were ok with it and had accepted it as a way of life. What in western countries is a huge inconvenience, in India it feels like something that you will get used to eventually. The feeling of its ok to be inconvenienced and still be happy in life is deep rooted in the culture.If you notice, both these things, quest for knowledge and resilience towards inconvenience is needed in spiritual quests, something which India pioneered to the world. India is in every way consistent with what it should be if you look at it its whole existence and not just take a snapshot of its past 100 years and correlate it with what is happening in the world. And thats precisely the reason why I think India will thrive in the coming decades and centuries. It's quest for knowledge will propel it forward and its resiliency towards not being inconvenienced by petty things would keep the momentum intact.
As a bangladeshi I have watched privatization and IMF destroy my own country.
Its rich that someone who took a vacation in India somehow figured out all its problems and knows all its solutions.
Strong labour laws in India prevented Indian workers from being exploited by foreigners - Unlike in my own country where my people are slaves to american consumer demands via walmart.
India is exactly what you end up when you institute democratic rule over a real nation.
The idea of self-reliance is what allowed Indians to develop their own space mission, nuclear power, submarines and unique cryogenic rockets that even the american cannot get their hands on. And now the british use our rockets.
I went to a rural village in west bengal where they got their first light bulb. What is cool about it is not that its basic electricity but because it was powered using a nuclear plant.
Its embarrassing that in the UK the electricity is generated mostly by coal. Who is the backward nation again ?
Indians are not interested in your fancy iphones. They have no purpose when you think about it. India is completely happy to wait for technology to catch up rather than destroy and pillage their environment and water.
Unlike the americans the indians didn't have the luxury to rape and pillage an entire continent and another one. Resources are scares - water, food, land.
India is now developing thorium and is building power plants in the south. Sounds like they are doing perfectly fine. Slow,steady and sustainable progress.
The article is honest but the last paragraph makes me question whether it really was..
> India really is not a rational country. The English mushed India together in the panic of independence in 1947, but little heed was given to ethnic, religious, linguistic, historic, national, or geographic considerations which is one reason India has had problems with every one of its neighbors since. India as we know it will not survive another 30 or 40 years. This of course does not have to end in disaster, but it probably will given the chauvinism of its government and the way history has always worked.
Really? A democracy of 1.3 billion people which has held together for > 60 years and endured > 4 major wars will just topple? I find that very unlikely.
The fact is that despite a lot of troubles, the country has managed to remain more or less true to its principles of democracy and secularism, instead of devolving into a chaotic mess that most of the neighboring countries have faced. One reason is that the Indian Military has historically been apolitical, unlike many neighboring countries. I don't really understand how it has managed to stay together this way but I really hope that it does continue.
There seems to be a western fascination with the idea of breaking India into different countries. River of Gods, a sci-fi novel by Ian McDonald, imagines India as 12 separate nations.
I don't ascribe this to malice, but to sheer bewilderment. From a rational perspective, India should not really exist. It is just too large and heterogeneous to stick together.
When I was in the US, some people asked me if I "speak Indian". The rational brain assumes that if they speak French in France, Italian in Italy and German in Germany, they must speak Indian in India.
Half an hour later, I figured out why the west never can and never will understand India
People have been talking about the "Balkanization of India" for a while now. But there are no signs of this yet. Indians have a deep rooted (albeit slightly misguided and maybe even chauvinistic) sense of patriotism.
Patriotism is there, but the main problem here is that India is pretty much already very Balkanized in geography and class if not national boundaries. It also has a strong central government. Any revolutionary/indepedence movements therefore tend to be fringe (someone in Maharashtra does not really care for farmer movement in Bengal) and easily controlled (due to the strong center). The patriotism means that any overtly violent army action is not frowned upon but rather encouraged by most who have a voice. The extreme poverty means the poor are so wretched they do not have a voice. We have met people on a two hour drive (which means only about 30 km) outside Mumbai who have never been to a big city and know nothing beyond how to get to the next day. If by some magic, most Indians become a bit educated tomorrow, and have some life other than mere existence, then we can talk about actual Balkanization. Until then, India will exist as it always has. There is also the Partition which has affected the national psyche: talk of dividing the country is like so far out there, you'd be considered a traitor a few levels before that.
that is probably the best explanation I have read yet. But it is fairly true - I really dont know why. I think religion (in its most abstract: festivities + food) has a lot to do with it. And Bollywood.
But a lot has to do with our freedom movement - the way Gandhi, Nehru and Patel unified the different kingdoms into a single freedom struggle is incredible. And that has never gone away. We actually unified India AFTER the formal independence from the British. Hyderabad's Princely State (to which I notionally belong to... and Satya Nadella ) actually wanted to be independent and was annexed by the Indian Union by force.
And now, there is so much growth and money in India, that it is really hard to make a case for Balkanization - Kashmir is an edge case with a lot of international politics. But even in the far northeast (Mizoram, etc), the struggle is for a separate federal state... only a few splinter groups demand full independence.
There are 2 amazing things about this article:
1. It was written a while ago, and the general description of the country and its problems are just as true.
2. This quote: "In the eastern section of India, there is a company called Bengal Fertilizer, which was built in the early nineties. The government spent $1.2 billion on it and it took seven years to complete. It now employs 1550 people with complete work schedules, vacations, canteens, unions, etc. And yet they have never produced an ounce of fertilizer."
A good piece of writing - quite critical about the country, but also comes from a place of affection for the country.
> A good piece of writing - quite critical about the country, but also comes from a place of affection for the country.
I'm not sure where you're reading "affection" from. Rogers has been predicting and even actively cheerleading India's financial decline consistently for literally two decades. He even closes the article with a claim that is laughably ignorant[0] of historical facts, and just reeks of colonial apologism.
> India really is not a rational country. The English mushed India together in the panic of independence in 1947, but little heed was given to ethnic, religious, linguistic, historic, national, or geographic considerations which is one reason India has had problems with every one of its neighbors since. India as we know it will not survive another 30 or 40 years. This of course does not have to end in disaster, but it probably will given the chauvinism of its government and the way history has always worked.
The reason that India has been at war is because the world's then-largest superpower[1] (the British) openly declared that they wanted to start a civil war in India, and then actively funded terrorist[2] groups to ensure that it happened.
There are people in the US who have affection for India. Rogers is not one of them.
[0] No, I don't think that Rogers is actually ignorant of history; I'm saying he chooses to ignore history.
[1] India's fight for independence was just around the time that the US took over that epithet from the British
[2] That word didn't exist then, but that's absolutely what we would call them today
Re: "terrorists" and India at the time of independence
> That word didn't exist then, but that's absolutely what we would call them today
It had actually existed for about a century and half before that, and had been used in the modern sense (including referring to non-state and subnational actors, often directing violence against a state, rather than the original use referring to terrorism strictly in the sense of a top-down means of state control originating with the French Revolution's Reign of Terror and its architects, the original "terrorists") for about 70-80 years prior to Indian independence.
Agreed, in fact just last week I was just watching a Dutch program I recalled watching back in 2005 when I was a teenager, it was basically a conversation that Rogers and Marc Faber and another guy had on their ideas of the future. Then India came along and he was incredibly negative and dismissive and that stood out to me as being over the top. Here I am a week later, surprised to see a topic on just that (Rogers about India) and not surprised to find comments like yours.
Funnily enough, after reading the first paragraph, it still sounds like a recent article even though it has been years. In fact, the country probably has taken two steps back under Manmohan Singh.
To a certain extent, even if the article was recent, it's not a surprise. Democracies are SLOW and India is still a social democracy trying to be a capitalistic democracy - so even slower.
Democracies move fast only during a crisis. Otherwise, they are inherently slow.
Even in the US, a majority of top issues have not changed much since the 90s. Politicians have been debating pretty much the same thing without much progress...
Factually if we take each point in the Article, a lot has changed and yet not enough:
1. You can get cross country SIM card easily in India today.
2. Taxes for IT business is uniform (no incentive for export per se)
3. Indian IT industry did just fine during bubble burst so Author's cyncism was bit misplaced.
4. Indian aviation industry is fierecly competitive. Today no one worries about future of Air India not because Air India has become good but there is enough competition.
Sim cards charge heavily for "roaming" in other states. A sim card still truly belongs to only one state.
Despite the tax reform, doing any business in India is still a hassle nevertheless.
Indian aviation industry may be competitive, but can a middle-class family really afford an airplane ticket ? No. They are only afforded the option of a second class train ticket which have toilets worse than the one shown in Trainspotting. And I haven't even touched the topic of trains being overcrowded. Seriously, who thought letting any number of people with a ticket on the train was a good idea ?
The Raj - or the consequence of The Raj are still ubiquitous. They were moving in right direction with BJP in charge (and talking about capitalism only not other issues). Last 10 years of Congress has stifled lot of the progress that Narshima Rao's Gov started.
We (Indians) can look all over for the causes of what ails India, but not at the one place where a majority of the blame lies: ourselves.
We will bemoan the corrupt system; but given a chance to make life a little bit easier, not hesitate to offer a bribe.
We will spew venom at the useless politicians who do nothing but line their pockets; but then turn around and vote for one based on caste/religion.
We will express angst at the garbage that litters our cities; but not hesitate to toss it out the window (or our home's garbage on the street).
Gandhi said, be the change you want to see. I'm not a fan of Gandhi, but in this he was right. We must change our behavior, before we can expect the system to change.
I agree with you. But you are not giving India enough credit.
India has a corruption problem - and so does the americans, british, europeans, etc . Hell The LIBOR scandal is on 900 trillion dollars. And this is before I bring up 2008.
Privatization is not that answer. Look at the situation at Bangladesh if you want to see what privatization leads to.
Corruption may be a problem in the US too, but, having lived here for a decade, I can assure you I've never been asked nor offered a single bribe. Corruption doesn't affect the common man directly here. In any case: just because it's in some other country, makes it all right to do it in India, right? Instead of racing for the bottom, why not try racing to the top, and compare India to Sweden, Norway, etc.?
Having in lived in India most of my life, I don't need to read an Economist article to find out what corruption is. Want to get a passport? Pay a bribe. Want to construct an addition to you house? Pay a bribe (or just do it illegally). The list goes on. In countries like US, Sweden, Canada, etc at least you're not hammered with corruption requests in your day-to-day existence.
By "Corruption is a closely related and slightly different thing" I meant the same thing. My point is non existence of bribery does not automatically translate to no corruption.
Sounds exactly like what I would say about Brazil. A great country with great people and great potential, but so messed up by it's own culture, attitude and habits.
Heh. It reads like the usual "business" article with several apriori assumptions. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I'm OK with bias as long as people don't claim to be neutral.
* Capitalism good, Socialism bad
* All countries should emulate the west.
* "Not Business friendly" - Code for this country won't let us exploit their people.
Then we come to the actual substance.
>First, revenues from software made by Indian companies is taxed while export revenues are tax-exempt. In other words, an Indian company has no incentive to do local business.
Uh, yeah. Sure. All the people doing exactly that don't exist. They have no incentive !!
>By then, India may have learned to practice true economic reform, taking a lesson from their neighbors in China.
Why would anyone want to take a lesson from China? - Which BTW continues to forcibly exert control over the lives of her people (including businesses).
>Maybe then they will understand that a free-market economy isn't necessarily a new form of colonialism.
Wow. Dude, India has been trading and doing business with East Africa, the Middle East, all of south Asia including China since like 6 AD. We 'understand' how to trade just fine.
> No bubble ends with two-year lows. Bubbles end with 10 or 15 year lows
It seems like the software bubble ended with lows for maybe half that time. Is there anything peculiar to software or that time that made it different than other bubbles in history?
I think it may make sense to use this title in the original article as the site might carry some context but using it in HN doesn't seem too efficient.
A little inefficiency—not much, just enough to be a speed bump—is a good thing on the HN front page, because it interrupts the usual internet reflexes. Reflexive responses, being predictable, are not interesting. What we want are reflective responses. Reflection is a slower process, requiring a pause. So I think it's good if we readers have to work a little: it slows us down, and maybe activates better circuitry.
I agree with you on slowing down "reflexive responses" but I would say cryptic titles may not be the right approach specially on weekdays.
If I've to read an essay to understand the context the chances are I'll put it off for later and unfortunately will not be able to participate in the discussion.
A cheeky example. The 6 months I spent in India a couple of years ago, I found it impossible to obtain a canister of compressed air to clean my laptop, which had accumulated more dust in the 6 months than the 4 years prior. There are much better examples, but still.
Because most of the broader conclusions barring some minor details including brown-outs, dilapidated roads and crumbling railways and insane government officers has not changed.
India was called hope of Asia in 50s. The hope and promise was nothing new, and the delivery was never there.