In the last decade, India has been spoken of, along with China, as a rising power. A country with over a billion people and growing, ready to work and turn India into the churning money/knowledge/development factory that we all expected it to become. Yet something has happened. China is still moving up, continuously in the news and on our minds with its new developments, controversies and slow grasping back of power, but India has seemed to be left behind. In the article Debacle in New Delhi, Sadanand Dhume uses the Common Wealth Games, which are to be held in New Delhi, as an example of India’s growing confusion and not progressive development.
Over the last 20 years, liberalization and globalization have unshackled many of the country’s most productive citizens from heavy-handed socialism and raised living standards faster than at any time in the nation’s history. But even as the private sector booms — swelling the middle class and producing billionaires by the fistful — the quality of governance remains abysmal. Neither the courts nor the electorate punish public servants for amassing private fortunes. In parts of the country, the political and criminal classes are hard to tell apart.
Corruption seems to be the new dictatorship. Where as driven and passionate people were once held down by arbitrary laws and oppressive governments, corruption and lack of rule of law has seemed to fill that role. Countries in which a small few are prospering and the majority continue to eek out a living, remains a high number throughout the world. I would be interested in reading about the factors that play into developing countries, the main one being, is democracy actually conducive to development? (I’m talking real democracy not theoretical) or is strict rule of law and knowledge of consequences matched with a slightly open market the jump start that some countries need.
Sorry here is the link to the article.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/09/22/debacle_in_new_delhi
When I took my history of civilization classes (which took a more holistic approach than Western Civ/Eastern Civ) one of the recurring themes in India was the lack of a single, unified government for most of its history. It’s one of the world’s oldest civilizations, yet in some ways one of the newest. The 2001 census listed 29 languages spoken by over a million people; add in the religious conflicts and it becomes less and less surprising that things are the way they are.
Without diminishing the tremendous progress China has made, it does have a long imperial tradition to build upon and a dominant ethnic group (the Han Chinese), though of course it’s by no means a homogeneous country. Religion is another area where, despite being a serious issue in places like Xinjiang and Tibet, the magnitude of the challenge is greater in India.
The question about democracy is an interesting one. Would China be where it is today if it had democratized rather than quietly sweeping Mao under the rug while retaining its authoritarian structure?
The question you posed, whether democracy is actually conducive to development is indeed a very interesting one, and there has been a lot of work done regarding the question. I actually did some research regarding the topic for a different class, and looked at if democracy does affects economic development, and if it does, in what ways…
Traditionally, many political scientists of the cold war era had believed that poor countries at the lower stage of economic development benefited more from authoritarian and that at higher stage of development benefited more from democracy. However, there is little evidence of it, and many economists and foreign policy advisors now believe other wise.
What I got from the research was that the prevailing view now is that overall, there’s actually no benefits of democracy in terms of economic development, but there are some aspects of development in which non-democractic, dictatorship is more effective in promoting, and some ways in which democracy is more effective in promoting… For example, dictatorship has higher number of total labor force, whereas democracy has higher productivity…also, many political scientists seemed to have believed that the growth of capital stock is higher in dictatorship, but then democracy has better allocation of resources to productive use, and has better quality of economic decisions through free flow of information.
So overall, the net effect is that regime type actually plays little, if any, roles in promoting or hindering economic development.
India’s democracy does seem to need improvement, but it does have a strong democracy if we look at the past elections, India has had “peaceful” elections, but every democracy is different, but that doesn’t make it “not a democracy.”
And China has a reason to keep pushing; historically the Chinese have lost many wars to foreigners and have been forced to pay for the results, they have been humiliated for so long, and one way to show power is to be strong, because they don’t want to go through the humiliation phase again. And lets face it the Chinese now what they are doing with their economy, and they don’t need to be a democracy to do it.
That’s interesting about the correlation – or lack thereof – between government type and economic development. It made me wonder if trying to have a functioning democracy with such a massive population is more of a hindrance than the simple fact of being a democracy.
In any case, this makes me eager to see is how Brazil, which is mentioned as another up and coming power in the “possibly related posts” section, will fare when it hosts the 2016 Olympics.