“There is more to life than GDP” – guess who could have made that statement. Atleast it can be safely assumed it wouldn’t come from an economist. Well, at times the economists take break from giving rosy picture of highs and speak the truth.
And in this case it was our Prime Minister, Dr.Manmohan Singh – an economist too.
The reason I wanted to get this post out is not because of any statement on GDP – but because atlast we have the leader of our country (fine – we have the President, then let me say – elected leader of the country, problem here too – Dr.Singh was not elected to Lok Sabha by the people, well anyways I am talking of Dr.Singh) has answered a question on our next-door-neighbor, China.
I thank the journalist for putting up this question – of is New Delhi’s approach to development preferable to Beijing’s when the latter has grown at a much higher rate for more years that India
And Dr.Singh had a straight forward answer for it (for once our political leaders have learnt to answer the question rather than beating the bush – btw, Dr.Singh is not just any other policitician, he is a respectable and respected man. I like him – he is second only to Mr.Atal Bihari Vajpayee on my fav list of Indian PMs. I prefer his second term to his first, may be the lack of his weak “left” side is working to his/and our benefit!!!).
“There is do doubt that the Chinese growth performance is superior to India’s performance.”
“I have always believed that there are other values which are important than the growth of the GDP. I think the respect for fundamental human rights, the respect for the rule of law, respect for multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious rights, these have values also.”
“There are several dimensions of human freedom”.
” I do believe that even though the Indian performance with regard to GDP might not be as good as the Chinese, certainly I would not like to choose the Chinese path.”
“I would like to stick to the Indian path. Also, I believe, India may appear as an indecisive democracy at times, and it does, because many democracies are short-term maximizers — they are not able to take a long-term view.”
“Once a democracy believes on the basis of a wide-ranging consensus only reforms that are undertaken will be far more durable, will be far more effective than reforms introduced by the writ of a ruling group in a non-democratic set-up.”
Okay, to anyone who is not as optimistic as him – we better not live.
Even if I would prefer seeing certain aspects of Indian democracy changed, and prefer few of Chinese models at work at home, I think I’ll still give a thumbs-up to Dr.Manmohan Singh’s answer.
Complete report here.
