"Anil Kumar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I quite disagree with the 'less government 'support' the better' argument. > In India, good examples (IMHO) are the development of the Information > Technology sector, now followed by the Business Process Outsourcing sector, > both having benefited from various forms of government (both Central and > State) support including but not limited to support in procuring land and > buildings, reduced to nil stamp duties and registration fees on real estate > transactions, tax free income generation.
Here is my simple counterargument. If you look at the countries with the highest levels of economic development, they are largely the countries with the smallest amount of government interference in the economy. Indeed, the lesson of India over the last century may be that the ideas of the Fabian Society don't really work out well in practice. On the other hand, if you look at what John Cowperthwaite's Hong Kong, it did remarkably well in quite a short period of time. If you look at the primary change in China in the last 30 years, it has been the elimination of control, not the imposition of control. If you look at the economic decline of France, it has coincided almost perfectly with the imposition of strong labor controls. I am not sure I want to get into an argument here with people as I'm not an expert in Indian affairs, but I think the experiment has been tried repeatedly at this point -- Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc. on the deregulation side, Argentina, France, the UK prior to Thatcher, etc. on the regulation side -- and I think the results are clear. Perry
