South Korea

Amitabh Kant, the Indian Middle Class and their Dream of a Benevolent Autocrat

Dekh tere sansar ki halat kya ho gayi bhagwan,
Kitna badal gaya insaan, kitna badal gaya insaan.

— Kavi Pradeep, C Ramachandra, Kavi Pradeep and IS Johar, in Nastik (1954).

Sometime in late December last year I was part of a panel deliberating on where the Indian economy is headed, at a business school in Mumbai.

Towards the end of the discussion, a fund manager sitting towards my right, offered his final reason on why the so-called India growth story was faltering. He said, India has too much democracy.

The room was full of MBA students, just the kind of audience which laps up reasons like the one offered by the fund manager. As soon as he finished speaking, I explained to the audience why the fund manager was wrong, not just because India and the world need democracy, but also from the point of view of economic growth.

Of course, that wasn’t the first time I had heard the too much democracy argument being made in the context of it holding back India’s economic growth. Over the years, I have seen, friends, family members, random acquaintances and men and women I don’t know, make this argument with panache and great confidence.

It seemed, as if, in their minds, they had a picture of this great leader who would come on a white horse, brandishing his sword, and set everything right. They wanted India to be governed by a benevolent autocrat. 

Given this, it is hardly surprising that Amitabh Kant, the CEO of the NITI Aayog, and one of central government’s top bureaucrats, said yesterday (December 8, 2020): “Tough reforms are very difficult in the Indian context, we are too much of a democracy.”

The thinking here is that given that India is a democracy, decision making takes time and effort and you can’t just push through economic reforms which can lead to economic growth. Getting things done needs a collaborative effort and hence, is deemed to be difficult. Hence, it would be great to have less democracy, making it easier for a strong leader to push economic reforms through.

Of course, the mainstream media has largely ignored Kant’s comment. But this is an important issue and needs to be discussed.

The question is where does the thinking of too much democracy come from.

Some of it is remnant from the emergency era of 1975-1977, when trains used to apparently run on time. Trains not running on time was basically a manifestation of the general frustration of dealing with the so-called Indian system.

The logic being that, with the then prime minister Indira Gandhi keeping democracy on a backseat, it essentially ensured that the system (represented by trains) actually worked well (represented by trains running on time).

In the recent years, too much democracy hurting India’s future economic prospects comes from the economic success of China. China doesn’t have democracy. The Chinese Communist Party governs the country. In fact, there is no difference between the Party and the government.

This essentially has ensured they can push economic growth without any resistance from the opposition, different sections of the society or the citizens themselves for that matter.

China is not the only example of this phenomenon. Countries like South Korea under Park Chung-hee, Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek and Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, made rapid economic surges under leaders who can be categorised as benevolent autocrats.

As economist Vijay Joshi said at the 15th LK Jha memorial lecture at the Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai, in December 2017:

“ Fewer than half-a-dozen of the 200-odd countries in the world have achieved super-fast and inclusive growth for two or more decades on the run, and almost all of them were autocracies during their rapid sprints.”

So, history tells us that most super-fast growing countries at different points of time have been autocracies.

Beyond this, there is the so-called India growth story which also leads to the sort of thinking which concludes that too much democracy hurts economic growth. Ravinder Kaur makes this point beautifully in Brand New Nation—Capitalist Dreams and Nationalist Designs in Twenty-First-Century India.

As she writes:

“What is dubbed a growth story in policy-business circles is essentially an enchanting fairy-tale blueprint of economic reforms along with calls of a strong political leader to implement it… After all, capital has always rooted for strong, decisive leaders and centralized governance that can ensure its swift mobility and put the nation’s resources at the disposal of investors.”

A good part of India’s corporate and non-corporate middle class buys into this kind of thinking. They look at themselves as investor-citizens.

This leads to the firm belief that autocracies lead to faster economic growth. Hence, too much democracy is bad for economic growth. Only if India had a stronger leader. QED. Or so goes the thinking.

Dear Reader, this is nothing but very lazy thinking. While, most super-fast growing countries may have been autocracies with a benevolent autocrat at the top, the real question is, are all autocracies with a benevolent autocrat at the top, or at least most of them, super-fast growing countries.

Economist William Easterly makes this point in a research paper titled Benevolent Autocrats. As he writes: “The probability that you are an autocrat IF you are a growth success is 90 percent. This probability seems to influence the discussion in favour of autocrats.”

But that is the wrong question to ask. The question that needs to be asked should be exactly opposite—if a country is governed by an autocrat what are the chances that it will be a growth success? Or as Easterly puts it: “The relevant probability is whether you are a growth success IF you are an autocrat, which is only 10 percent.”

And this is where things get interesting, if we choose to look at data. Ruchir Sharma offers this data in his book The Ten Rules of Successful Nations. Let’s look at this pointwise.

1) In the last three decades, there were 124 cases of a country growing at faster than 5% for a period of ten years. Of these, 64 growth spells came under a democratic regime and 60 under an authoritarian one. Clearly, when it comes to countries growing at a reasonable rate of growth for a period of ten years, democracies do well as well as authoritarian regimes.

2) Let’s up the cut off to an economic growth of 7% or more for a period of ten years. How does the data look in this case? Sharma looked at data of 150 countries going back to 1950. He found 43 cases where a country’s economy grew at an average rate of 7% or more for a period of ten years. Interestingly, 35 of these cases came under authoritarian governments. As mentioned earlier, super-fast growth and autocrats go together. But this just shows one side of things.

3) So, what’s the other side? While super-fast growth in a bulk of cases has happened under authoritarian regimes, so have long economic slumps or economic slowdowns.

As Sharma writes:

“Long slumps are also much more common under authoritarian rule. Since 1950, there have been 138 cases in which, over the course of a full decade, a nation posted an average annual growth rate of less than 3 percent—which feels like a recession in emerging countries. And 100 of those cases unfolded under authoritarian regimes, ranging from Ghana in the 1950s and ’60s to Saudi Arabia and Romania in the 1980s, and Nigeria in the 1990s. The critical flaw of autocracies is this tendency toward extreme, volatile outcomes.”

Also, under authoritarian regimes, economic growth can see wild swings.

So, for every China there is a Zimbabwe as well, which people forget to talk or think about. For every Singapore, there are scores of African dictators who killed thousands of people during their rule and destroyed their respective economies. Hence, while autocracies may lead to super-fast growth, they can also lead to long-term economic stagnation and huge political turmoil.

Also, evidence is clear that steady growth happens best in democracies.

As Sharma writes:

“Together, Sweden, France, Belgium, and Norway have posted only one year of growth faster than 7 percent since 1950. But over that time, these four democracies have all seen their average incomes increase five- to sixfold, to a minimum of more than $30,000, in part because they rarely suffered full years of negative growth.”

Further, if you look at the list of countries with a per-capita income of more than $10,000, all of them are democracies. China, as and when it reaches there, will be the first autocracy, which will make it an exception. An exception, which proves the rule. That is, in the  medium to long-term, democracy and economic growth go hand in hand.

At least, that’s what history and data tell us. But don’t let that come in your way of believing the good story of authoritarian regimes run by benevolent autocrats leading to fast economic growth all the time.

It must be true if you believe in it. I mean, Mr Kant surely does. And so do a whole host of middle class Indian men and women.

Get ready for a real mess: A new chapter may be opening in currency wars

3D chrome Dollar symbolVivek Kaul


The Japanese yen recently touched a six year low against the dollar. One dollar is currently worth around 108-110 yen. This many experts believe will lead to the start of a new round of currency wars. As Albert Edwards of Societe Generale writes in a recent research note dated September 22, 2014 “the yen has slipped below a key 15-year support level against the dollar…The next phase of global currency wars may have begun.”
The term “currency war” was first used by Guido Mantega, the Brazilian finance minister, in 2010. It refers to a situation where multiple countries start driving down the value of their currencies against the dollar in a bid to drive up exports and inflation.
Before we try and understand Edwards’ statement in detail, it is important to go back a few years. The Bank of Japan joined the money printing party rather late in the day towards the end of 2012. Before this the balance sheet of the Japanese central bank had expanded only 30% since the start of the financial crisis. Interestingly, in January 2012, the total assets of the Japanese central bank had stood at 128 trillion yen. Since then, it has more than doubled to 275.9 trillion yen at the end of August 2014.
The Bank of Japan plans to inject $1.4 trillion into the Japanese financial system by April 2015 by buying Japanese government bonds every month. This is pretty big, given that the size of the Japanese economy is around $5 trillion. Currently, it is printing 5 trillion yen every month and pumping that into the financial system by buying bonds. That explains why the total assets held by the bank have more than doubled.
The Bank of Japan entered the money printing party only after Shinzo Abe was elected as the prime minister on December 26, 2012. Abe promised to end Japan’s more than two decades old recession through some old fashioned economics, which has since been termed as Abenomics.
Abenomics is nothing but money printing in the hope of driving down the value of the yen against the dollar in the hope of increasing exports and also creating some inflation.
As James Rickards writes in The Death of Money “Japan…had another reason to support the money printing…Money printing was being done not only to promote exports but to increase import prices. These more expensive imports would cause inflation to offset deflation…In Japan’s case, inflation would primarily come through higher prices of energy exports.”
The Bank of Japan decided to get in bed with the government on this and is targeting an inflation of 2 percent. It wants to reach the goal at the earliest possible date. And how does that help? In December 2012, Japan had an inflation rate of –0.1 percent. For 2012, on the whole, inflation was at 0 percent, which meant that prices did not rise at all. In fact, for each of the years in the period 2009-2011, prices had fallen in Japan.
When prices are flat, or are falling, or are expected to fall, consumers generally tend to postpone consumption (i.e., buying goods and services) in the hope that they will get a better deal in the future. This impacts businesses, as their earnings either remain flat or fall. This slows down economic growth.
On the other hand, if people see prices going up or expect prices to go up, they generally tend to start purchasing things. So a moderate inflation helps businesses as well as the overall economy. Hence, by trying to create some inflation the idea is to get consumption going again in Japan and help it come out of a more than two decades old recession.
The money printing has helped create some inflation in Japan. In July 2014, the consumer price inflation in Japan stood at 1.3%. One reason for this rise has been the fall in the value of yen against the dollar. In early November 2012, one dollar was worth 79.4 yen. Currently, one dollar is worth 108-110 yen, as mentioned earlier. This has made imports expensive and pushed up inflation. As John Lanchester writes in his new book How To Speak Money “The yen has dropped, which is a good thing for Japanese industry, and inflation is showing signs of returning, which is also a good thing, though some commentators are worried that the process could quickly go out of hand.”
The question here is how can the process quickly go out of hand? Allow me to explain. The inflation hasn’t led to people spending more money. In fact, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Japan contracted at an annualized rate of 6.8% during the three month period of April to June 2014. It was also expected that a falling yen will boost Japanese exports. But that doesn’t seem to have happened either. Exports have fallen in three out of the last four months. In August 2014, exports fell by 1.3%, in comparison to the same period last year.
Interestingly, one of the key learnings in the aftermath of the financial crisis has been that if a policy does not work for a central bank, it is likely to try more of it. Given this, it is expected that the Bank of Japan will print more money in the hope of inflation reaching the targeted 2% and to get exports going as well. Diana Choyleva, head of macroeconomic research at Lombard Street Research, writes in a research note that the Bank of Japan “is also likely to redouble its QE [quantitative easing] efforts if it is to achieve its 2 percent inflation target.”
This will lead to further depreciation of the yen against the value. As Edwards of Societe Generale puts it “One of the few things I have learnt over 30 years in this industry is that when traders decide the yen/US$ starts to move it can jump by Y10 or Y20 very, very quickly indeed.”
In this scenario other countries are also likely to print money so that their currencies lose value against the dollar, in order to keep their exports competitive. The thing to remember here is that money printing in the hope of driving down the value of currency is not something that only Japan can indulge in. Interestingly, this is precisely what had happened when Japan first made its first moves towards printing money in December 2012.
In fact, politicians in South Korea by early February 2013 had started voicing their concerns about the depreciating yen. South Korea and Japan compete in several export-oriented industries, like automobiles and electronics. Korean export companies like Samsung and Hyundai compete with Japanese companies like Sony and Toyota.
At the end of December 2012, one dollar was worth 1,038.1 Korean won. Soon, the Korean won also started depreciating against the dollar, and by late June 2013, one dollar was worth around 1,160 Korean won. The Thai baht started depreciating against the dollar in April 2014. The Malaysian ringitt joined the club from May 2013 onward. By early 2014, China had also entered the currency war by allowing the yuan to depreciate against the dollar.
Nevertheless, the depreciation of this currencies against the dollar did not continue. The South Korean won is back to where it started and currently quotes at around 1063 won to a dollar. But there is nothing that can stop these countries from starting to cheapen their currencies against the dollar, all over again. The currency wars might break out all over again.
The joker in the pack is China. Currently, one dollar is worth around 6.14 Chinese yuan. It is interesting to look at the trajectory of the Chinese yuan over a period of time. In 2005, one dollar was worth around 8.27 yuan. By 2011, one dollar was worth around 6.82 yuan. The appreciation of the yuan against the dollar continued at a measured pace and by mid-January 2014, one dollar was worth 6.14 yuan. This is when things turned around and the yuan started to depreciate against the dollar, something that had not happened in a very long time. By April 30, 2014, one dollar was worth 6.25 yuan.
Among other things the depreciation of the yuan was also a response to Abenomics which had led to the depreciation of the yen against the dollar. One dollar was worth around 80 yen in November 2012, before Shinzo Abe had taken over as the Prime Minister of Japan. By January 2014, one dollar was worth 105 yen, thus making Japanese exports more competitive in the international market. China’s yuan had to be adjusted to this new reality. As China is trying to move up the value chain, its products are competing more and more with Japanese products in the international market.
Nevertheless, since June 2014, the yuan has been appreciating against the dollar. But if the Japanese keep printing money and driving down the value yen against the dollar, the Chinese are also likely to have to start pushing the yuan down against the dollar.
This would mean Chinese exports more competitive. As the yuan depreciates against the dollar it would allow Chinese exporters to cut prices of their products. Let’s understand this through an example. A Chinese exporters sells a product at $100. He ends up getting paid 614 yuan for it, at the current rate. But if one dollar is worth seven yuan, he would be paid 700 yuan. This situation will allow the Chinese exporter to cut the price of his product. Let’s say he cuts it to $90, even then he ends up earning 630 yuan ($90 x 7), which is more than earlier.
As Choyleva of Lombard Street Research, writes in a recent research note “If both Japan and the euro area go for extensive QE, emerging markets in Asia would suffer as their currencies appreciate. There would be no way China could restart its sputtering growth engine without major yuan devaluation.”
In order, to stay in competition, prices of products from other countries will have to be cut. And this will end up exporting deflation (a situation where prices are falling) to large parts of the world. Of course, it is worth remembering here that everybody cannot have the cheapest currency. Once countries start devaluing their currencies, it becomes a race to the bottom and is not good for anyone. In technical terms this is referred to as beggar thy neighbour policy.
As a senior official of the Federal Reserve once remarked: “Devaluing a currency is like peeing in bed. It feels good at first, but pretty soon it becomes a real mess.”

The article originally appeared on www.FirstBiz.com on Oct 2, 2014

(Vivek Kaul is the author of the Easy Money trilogy. He tweets @kaul_vivek)

FDI debate: Why Sushma should get the stupid-statement award

sushma swaraj
Vivek Kaul
It’s that time of the year when awards are given out of for the best things and possibly the worst things of the year. And the award for the most stupid statement of the year has to definitely go to Sushma Swaraj, the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha.
During the course of the debate on the government decision to allow foreign direct investment into multi-brand retailing or what is more popularly referred to as big retail, she said: “Will Wal-Mart care about the poor farmer’s sister’s wedding? Will Wal-Mart send his children to school? Will Wal-Mart notice his tears and hunger?”
These lines sound straight out of a bad Hindi movie of the 1980s with dialogues written by Kadar Khan. Yes, Wal-Mart will not care about the poor farmer’s sister’s wedding. Neither will it send his children to school. And nor notice his tears and hunger simply because its not meant to do thatThis is because Wal-Mart is a selfish company interested in making money and ensuring that its stock price goes up, so that its investors are rewarded.
The same stands true for every Indian company which is into big retail (be Tata, Birla, Ambani or for that matter Big Bazaar). No company, Indian or foreign, into big retail or not, is bothered about the tears of the farmer. And neither is the government.
Let’s look at some other things that Swaraj went onto say. “The remaining 70 percent of the goods sold in these supermarkets will be procured from China. Factories will open in China, traders will prosper in China while darkness will befall 12 crore people in India,” she declared.
Already a lot of what is sold in India comes from China. Around three weeks I went around several electronic shops in Delhi trying to help my mother choose a refrigerator. Almost all Indian brands had compressors which were Made in China. If one takes the compressor out of the equation what basically remains in a refrigerator is some plastic and some glass. And all that is Made in India.
My television set which is a Japanese brand is also Made in China. A leading Indian electrical company buys almost all the irons that it sells in India from China and simply stamps its brand name over it.
A lot of pitchkaris that get sold around the time of Holi and diyas and electronic lighting that get sold around the time of diwali are also Made in China. As a quote from a story that appeared in The Times of India story earlier this year went “It seems that ‘Made in China’ has researched our festivals and sensed the need of the customers. For the past 10 years, the business of local sprinklers is decreasing due to stiff competition with Chinese sprinklers. We are facing huge loss, plastic powder through which the pichkaris are prepared locally are bought at Rs 100 per kg while at the same time, there is no subsidy or relaxation on the name of festival,” shared Bihari Lal, a local manufacturer and trader of sprinklers.” Chinese made colours also available during Holi.
And none of this has been brought to India by Wal-Mart. It was brought to India largely by Indian entrepreneurs and traders, a lot of whom form the core voting base of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and also fund the party to a large extent.
Made in China has become a part of our lives whether we like it or not and it will continue to remain a part of our lives, with or without Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart does not supply us with Made in China goods, the Indian entrepreneurs and retailers will surely do, primarily because Chinese goods are cheaper than the Indian ones. Hence, what Swaraj wants us to believe is already happening with no Wal-Mart in sight.
The other point that comes out here is the ability of Wal-Mart to source stuff from China. This is not rocket science. Indian retailers can also do the same thing. As Rajiv Lal of the Harvard Business School told me in an earlier interview “If Wal-Mart is operating in Brazil there is nothing that Wal-Mart can do in Brazil that the local Brazilian guy cannot do. If you want to procure supplies from China, you can procure supplies from China as much as Wal-Mart can procure supplies.”
Swaraj also talked about predatory pricing that Wal-Mart would resort to. “These supermarkets introduce predatory pricing. At first, they will introduce such low prices, that will finish the rest of the market. Then when the customer has no other choice, they will keep hiking prices and looting the people,” she said.
This statement is also misleading As Rohit Deshpande of the Harvard Business Schoool told me in a recent interaction that I had with him “ For a company like Wal-Mart historical strategy is fairly easy to understand. It is to make a major branded product available cheaper. So you will have a wider assortment of branded product than any of their competitors that’s the first thing. The second thing is that they have private label. They keep increasing the percentage of their private label within each of their broad categories. So the consumers get trained to come to the store because they can find an assortment of branded products. And once they become loyal to your store then they find that they can make price comparisons within the store and they end up buying your private label. And then your margin is really so much better. It’s a strategy that has worked well for Wal-Mart.”
So for this strategy to work Wal-Mart has to ensure that they stock private label goods (basically their own brands) which are cheaper than other brands. Hence, Wal-Mart might decide to stock it’s own brand of soap which is lets say cheaper than Lifebuoy. For this strategy to work their own goods will have to be cheaper than other branded goods. Hence, it can’t keep increasing prices and keep looting people as Swaraj wants us to believe. Indians aren’t exactly idiots.
Also, if you have visited any of the big retail shops over the years you would have realised that these shops have been increasing the number of private label brands that they sell. As of now this is largely to limited to things like pulses, noodles, sugar etc. The point is that big retail in India is following the same strategy that Wal-Mart does worldwide.
The other interesting point that comes up here is that Wal-Mart is able to offer low prices primarily because of two things. One is the fact that it gets its real estate cheap because it typically sets up shop outside city limits. And two is the fact is the homogeneity of the population when it comes to consumption.
A typical Wal-Mart in the United States is situated outside the city, where rents are low. But such a strategy may not work in India. “It’s not easy to open a 150,000 square feet store in India. That kind of space is not available. They can’t open these stores 50 miles away from where the population lives. People in India don’t have the conveyance to go and buy bulk goods, bring it and store it. They don’t have the conveyance and they don’t have the big houses. So it doesn’t work,” explained Lal.
This is something that marketing guru V Kumar agreed with when I interviewed him sometime back. “Even if Wal-Mart is there in every place, the way they are located is typically outside the city limits. So only people with time, motivation and a vehicle, will be able to go and buy things. And the combination of these three things is very rare.”
The other factor as to why Wal-Mart may not be able to offer very low prices in India is because there is no homogeneity when it comes to consumption behaviour leading to a situation where the company may not have the same economies of scale that it does in other parts of the world.
As Kumar told me “Does the country as a whole consume common things or there are regional biases? In a country like Brazil people eat similar foods that every retailer can sell.” In India clearly things are different. “In India between South, East, West and the North, there is so much heterogeneity that you need localised catering and marketing. So consumption behaviour varies therefore unless you are willing to carry heterogeneous products in each of the locations it is tough,” said Kumar.
The point I am trying to make is that Wal-Mart is not such a big fear that it was made out to be by Swaraj. They do make their mistakes as well. As Deshpande told me “They have had hiccups in the interest of scale and cost efficiency. They have sometimes pushed products that did not make sense for the local market. An example, I believe it was in Argentina, where Wal-Mart, around July 4(the American independence day) had a lot of American flags shipped into their stores.
Pankaj Ghemawat, the youngest person to become a full professor at Harvard Business School makes an interesting point in his book Redefining Global Strategy. As he writes “When CEO Lee Scott (who was the CEO of Wal-Mart from 2000 to 2009) was asked a few years ago about why he thought Wal-Mart could expand successfully overseas, his response was that naysayers had also questioned the company’s ability to move successfully from its home state of Arkansas to Alabama…such trivialisation of international differences greases the rails for competing exactly the same way overseas at home. This has turned out to be a recipe for losing money in markets very different from the United States: as the former head of the company’s German operations, now shut down, plaintively observed, “We didn’t realise that pillowcases are a different size in Germany.””
Wal-Mart had to pull out of South Korea as well in 2006.
Hence, Swaraj could have clearly done some better research before making one of the most important speeches of her career. She could have read the recent column that P Sainath wrote in The Hindu , where he talks about Chris Pawelski, an American farmer and the onions that he produces.
As Sainath writes “While the Walmarts, Shop Rites and other chain stores sell his (i.e. Pawelski’s) kind of onions for $1.49 to $1.89 a pound, Pawelski himself gets no more than 17 cents. And that’s an improvement. Between 1983 and 2010, the average price he got stayed around 12 cents a pound. “All our input costs rose,” he points out. “Fertiliser, pesticide, just about everything went up. Except the price we got.” Which was about $6 a 50-pound bag. Retail prices though, soared in the same period. Distances are not the cause. The same chains sell cheap imports from Peru and China, driving down prices.”
The other interesting point that Sainath makes it that companies even dictate the size of the onions he produces. As Sainath writes “Pawelski held up the onion. “They want this size because they know you won’t use more than half of one of these in cooking a meal. And you’ll throw away the other half. The more you waste, the more you’ll buy.” The stores know this. So wastage is a strategy, not a by-product.”
Such examples on Wal-Mart and other big retail chains are not hard to find. A Google search throws up plenty of them. A speech against the negative effects of big retail should have been full of such examples instead of saying things like whether Wal-Mart will be bothered by farmer’s sister’s wedding. 
The article originally appeared on www.firstpost.com on December 5, 2012.
(Vivek Kaul is a writer. He can be reached at [email protected])

Sonia’s UPA is taking us to new ‘Hindu’ rate of growth


Vivek Kaul

Raj Krishna, a professor at the Delhi School of Economics, came up with the term “Hindu rate of growth” to refer to Indian economy’s sluggish gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 3.5% per year between the 1950s and the 1980s. The phrase has been much used and abused since then.
A misinterpretation that is often made is that Krishna used the term to infer that India grew slowly because it was a nation dominated by Hindus. In fact he never meant anything like that. Krishna was a believer in free markets and wasn’t a big fan of the socialistic model of development put forward by Jawahar Lal Nehru and the Congress party.
In fact he realised over the years looking at the slow economic growth of India that the Nehruvian model of socialism wasn’t really working. This was visible in the India’s secular or long term economic growth rate which averaged around 3.5% during those days.
The word to mark here is “secular”. The word in its common every day usage refers to something that is not specifically related to a particular religion. Like our country India. One of the fundamental rights Indians have is the right to freedom of religion which allows us to practice and propagate any religion.
But the world “secular” has another meaning. It also means a long term trend. Hence when economists like Krishna talk about the secular rate of growth they are talking about the rate at which a country like India has grown year on year, over an extended period of time. And this secular rate of growth in India’s case was 3.5%. This could hardly be called a rate of growth for a country like India which was growing from a very low base and needed to grow at a much faster pace to pull its millions out of poverty.
So Krishna came up with the word “Hindu” which was the direct opposite of the word “secular” to take a dig at Jawahar Lal Nehru and his model of development. Nehru was a big believer in secularism. Hence by using the word “Hindu” Krishna was essentially taking a dig on Nehru and his brand of economic development, and not Hindus.
The policies of socialism and the license quota raj followed by Nehru, his daughter Indira Gandhi and grandson Rajiv ensured that India grew at a very slow rate of growth. While India was growing at a sub 4% rate of growth, South Korea grew at 9%, Taiwan at 8% and Indonesia at 6%. These were countries which were more or less at a similar point where India was in the late 1940s.
The Indian economic revolution stared in late July 1991, when a certain Manmohan Singh, with the blessings of PV Narsimha Rao, initiated the economic reform process. The country since then has largely grown at the rates of 7-8% per year, even crossing 9% over the last few years.
Over the years this economic growth has largely been taken for granted by the Congress led UPA politicians, bureaucrats and others in decision making positions. Come what may, we will grow by at least 9%. When the growth slipped below 9%, the attitude was that whatever happens we will grow by 8%. When it slipped further, we can’t go below 7% was what those in decision making positions constantly said. On a recent TV show Montek Singh Ahulwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, kept insisting that a 7% economic growth rate was a given. Turns out it’s not.
The latest GDP growth rate, which is a measure of economic growth, for the period of January to March 2012 has fallen to 5.3%. I wonder, what is the new number, Mr Ahulwalia and his ilk will come up with now. “Come what may we will grow at least by 4%!” is something not worth saying on a public forum.
But chances are that’s where we are headed. As Ruchir Sharma writes in his recent book Breakout Nations – In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles “India is already showing some of the warning signs of failed growth stories, including early-onset of confidence.”
The history of economic growth
Sharma’s basic point is that economic growth should never be taken for granted. History has proven otherwise. Only six countries which are classified as emerging markets by the western world have grown at the rate of 5% or more over the last forty years. These countries are Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Hong Kong. Of these two, Hong Kong and Taiwan are city states with a very small area and population. Hence only four emerging market countries have grown at a rate of 5% or more over the last forty years. Only two of these countries i.e. Taiwan and South Korea have managed to grow at 5% or more for the last fifty years.
“In many ways “mortality rate” of countries is as high as that of stocks. Only four companies – Procter & gamble, General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont- have survived on the Dow Jones index of the top-thirty U.S. industrial stocks since the 1960s. Few front-runners stay in the lead for a decade, much less many decades,” writes Sharma.
The history of economic growth is filled with examples of countries which have flattered to deceive. In the 1950s and 1960s, India and China, the two biggest emerging markets now, were struggling to grow. The bet then was on Iraq, Iran and Yemen. In the 1960s, the bet was Philippines, Burma and Sri Lanka to become the next East Asian tigers. But that as we all know that never really happened.
India is going the Brazil way
Brazil was to the world what China is to it now in the 1960s and the 1970s. It was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. But in the seventies it invested in what Sharma calls a “premature construction of a welfare state”, rather than build road and other infrastructure important to create a viable and modern industrial economy. What followed was excessive government spending and regular bouts of hyperinflation, destroying economic growth.
India is in a similar situation now. Over the last five years the Congress party led United Progressive Alliance is trying to gain ground which it has lost to a score of regional parties. And for that it has been very aggressively giving out “freebies” to the population. The development of infrastructure like roads, bridges, ports, airports, education etc, has all taken a backseat.
But the distribution of “freebies” has led to a burgeoning fiscal deficit. Fiscal deficit is the difference between what a government earns and what it spends.
For the financial year 2007-2008 the fiscal deficit stood at Rs 1,26,912 crore against Rs 5,21,980 crore for the current financial year. In a time frame of five years the fiscal deficit has shot up by nearly 312%. During the same period the income earned by the government has gone up by only 36% to Rs 7,96,740 crore. The huge increase in fiscal deficit has primarily happened because of the subsidy on food, fertilizer and petroleum.
This has meant that the government has had to borrow more and this in turn has pushed up interest rates leading to higher EMIs. It has also led to businesses postponing expansion because higher interest rates mean that projects may not be financially viable. It has also led to people borrowing lesser to buy homes, cars and other things, leading to a further slowdown in a lot of sectors. And with the government borrowing so much there is no way the interest rate can come down.
As Sharma points out: “It was easy enough for India to increase spending in the midst of a global boom, but the spending has continued to rise in the post-crisis period…If the government continues down this path India, may meet the same fate as Brazil in the late 1970s, when excessive government spending set off hyperinflation and crowded out private investment, ending the country’s economic boom.”
Where are the big ticket reforms?
India reaped a lot of benefits because of the reforms of 1991. But it’s been 21 years since then. A new set of reforms is needed. Countries which have constantly grown over the years have shown to be very reform oriented. “In countries like South Korea, China and Taiwan, they consistently had a plan which was about how do you keep reforming. How do you keep opening up the economy? How do you keep liberalizing the economy in terms of how you grow and how you make use of every crisis as an opportunity?” says Sharma.
India has hardly seen any economic reform in the recent past. The Direct Taxes Code was initiated a few years back has still not seen the light of day, but even if it does see the light of day, it’s not going to be of much use. In its original form it was a treat to read with almost anyone with a basic understanding of English being able to read and understand it. The most recent version has gone back to being the “Greek” that the current Income Tax Act is.
It has been proven the world over that simpler tax systems lead to greater tax revenues. Then the question is why have such complicated income tax rules? The only people who benefit are CAs and the Indian Revenue Service officers.
Opening up the retail sector for foreign direct investment has not gone anywhere for a long time. This is a sector which is extremely labour intensive and can create a lot of employment.
What about opening up the aviation sector to foreigners instead of pumping more and more money into Air India? As Warren Buffett wrote in a letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, the company whose chairman he is, a few years back “The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down…The airline industry’s demand for capital ever since that first flight has been insatiable. Investors have poured money into a bottomless pit, attracted by growth when they should have been repelled by it.”
If foreigners want to burn their money running airlines in India why should we have a problem with it?
The insurance sector is bleeding and needs more foreign money, but there is a cap of 26% on foreign investment in an insurance company. Again this limit needs to go up. The sector very labour intensive and has potential to create employment. The same is true about the print media in India.
The list of pending economic reforms is endless. But in short India needs much more economic reform in the days to come if we hope to grow at the rates of growth we were growing.
To conclude
Raj Krishna was a far sighted economist. He knew that the Nehruvian brand of socialism was not working. It never has. It never did. And it never will. But somehow the Congress party’s fascination for it continues. And in continuance of that, the party is now distributing money to the citizens of India through the various so called “social-sector” schemes. If economic growth could be created by just distributing money to everyone, then India would have been a developed nation by now. But that’s not how economic growth is created. The distribution of money creates is higher inflation which leads to higher interest rates and in turn lower economic growth. Also India is hardly in a position to become a welfare state. The government just doesn’t earn enough to support the kind of money it’s been spending and plans to spend.
Its time the mandarins who run the Congress party and effectively the country realize that. Or rate of growth of India’s economy (measured by the growth in GDP) will continue to fall. And soon it will be time to welcome the new “Hindu” rate of economic growth. And how much shall that be? Let’s say around 3.5%.
(The article originally appeared at www.firstpost.com on June 1,2012. http://www.firstpost.com/politics/sonias-upa-is-taking-us-to-new-hindu-rate-of-growth-328428.html)
(Vivek Kaul is a writer and can be reached at [email protected])