> --- "D'Souza, Avelino" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Why can't India move as quickly ahead on > > infrastructure development as > > China? > --- Gabriel de Figueiredo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Checks and balances? More likely cheques and what > goes in the pockets! > > No, the reason is not democracy that has slowed down Indian > development - it is controls (in car manufacturing at one > time, the maximum production that was allowed, if I am not > mistaken, was 12,000 cars a year!) and the ubiquitous red > tape. > > For any new business to take off in Inida, it requires going > through layers of bureaucratic forms and not forgetting > the "oil" that one has to pay to get things moving. > > As to being accountable to Parliament, I wonder if anyone was. > Mario adds: > Having worked for Tatas in India in the mid to late 60's, I know from personal experience that Gabriel is right about the bureaucracy and red tape and the ever-present corruption. In addition, in the first 50 years after independence, there was a strong committment to socialism, contempt among the Nehru family for private businesses and business people, and a paranoia of foreign investment, all of which contributed to the mindless bureaucracy and red tape and the corruption that became necessary to cut through the fog. > I have personal knowledge from those Tata executives who were present that Indira Gandhi almost threw them out of her office when they suggested during a meeting that India embark on a massive national highway building program of the kind that had created economic booms in the US and Germany in earlier years. She refused to see that this would create work for millions of rural poor, or the ripple effect on the rest of the economy, and apparently kept repeating that such a project would benefit ONLY the "rich" industrialists. > While the industrialists would have beneffited, the rest of the population would have as well. It is only recently, after Manmohan Singh led the effort to "liberalize" India's economy that things have begun to move, though it will take another couple of generations to catch up with the rest of the democratic industrialized world. Right now, the communists that are part of the ruling coalition are still desperately trying to obstruct privatization of airport facilities at every turn, thus interfering and slowing down the burgeoning need for better airports and facilities in India. >