What India Must Do - A Must Read

Martin Wolf, the famous columnist of the Financial Times has just published an article titled What India Must Do If It Is To Be An Affluent Country. While the details and the solutions suggested is well known, I am struck by the conclusion.

What I take for the world is that India, for all the huge challenges it confronts, is likely to continue its rise, if more slowly than the report assumes. The job of adjusting the familiar western ways of thinking about the world to the new realities has hardly begun. Within a decade a world in which the UK is on the United Nations Security Council and India is not will seem beyond laughable. The old order passes. The sooner the world adjusts, the better.

Many years ago Rabindranath Tagore had penned this ...

Sound the clarion
India is going to reclaim its position at the top in the world stage.
(Lousy translation of the excellent Bangla poetry, I agree, but the meaning is conveyed, I hope)

But before that we need to change. The good thing is the path is clear, but do we have the political and social will?

read the article by Martin Wolf.

Making Budget Really Interesting

So the annual union budget is tabled. The television channels are out to out-do one another by projecting different, unique perspective to the budget.

Ok, here's a question: Can you tell me one item on which the duty was reduced in the last year's budget? That was difficult, wasn't it? Ok, I will make it simpler. Just generally, very generally, describe last year's budget - the general policies, the thrust. You now know where I am coming from. No one - except the economists and perhaps the FICCI, perhaps - remembers the budget 6 months down the line.

Now, here is one thing that can be done to make the budget more real to you and me - the common person: the finance minister can still make that 2 hour speech, if s/he so desires; but wouldn't it be nice if at the end of the whole budget a speadsheet is presented listing planned and actuals ... like this

Goal ---------Planned Budget ---- Achieved
Employment-------1,50,000------------ 25,000
New Roads -------6000 km -------------2000 km
Water -----------500 villages ------- 1200 villages
Electricity -----500 villages --------600 villages

The spreadsheet can be made available in the public domain and the bureaucrats can keep updating the document with the data.
Easy to understand. easy to follow.
Now that would be a true transparency.
So what do you say, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee (or any other future Finance Minister)? Up to the challenge?