Sweet-and-sour India

Sweet-and-sour India
Yoginder K.

The last year of the millennium was eventful. The world was getting out of economic despondency, but India was positively bouncing. One of the fastest growing economies of the wo-rld in the last biennium of the millennium. At a seminar at Wharton, I was honoured by my teacher, the Nobel Laureate economist, Law-rence R. Klein, himself attending it.

Fame has not dimmed his love for his students. He was there the wh-ole afternoon and the cocktails later. Asked a question on India's economic prospects, in the company of some life-long India baiters, I turned to Klein and asked him what the Link forecast was.

The Link is a Klein project in which national economies of the world are linked together through trade flows and short-term output is forecast for its corporate sponsors (unfortunately no Indian company is there). When Link was being made, I was at Penn. And Klein had given me the job of modelling developing countries, experience which I used in my PPD days in the Planning Commission later. I knew thework that went into churning out forecasts, now tried over three decades.

Pat came Klein's reply: 6.5 percent annual Yoginder. So you are going to grow at over 6 percent thro-ugh 2002, dear reader, linked up with the world. As President Clinton said, India will be one of the largest economies of the world in the next millennium. As one who was with it in the last quarter of the last century, always pushing for strength to be built up, always cautioning on the weaknesses, I lo-ve the feel-good factor as I turn si-xty years young and enter the next millennium.

The more important news ca-me from the World Institute of Development Economic Rese-arch (WIDER) at Helsinki, a part of the United Nations University. Completing one of the largest studies on growth and inequality in the liberalisation period, they came out with a khatta meetha finding for India. More meetha than khatta.

As a past Senior Fellow of WIDER, I was getting the first findings, but its director, Giovanni Andrea Cornea, presented its majorresults at the United Nations Univer- sity Council meeting at Tokyo in December. ``The picture is not pretty,'' Cornea said, ``it shows rising inequality in 45 out of 77 countries. In four countries (including India, dear Yoginder) inequality stopped declining over the long term, while in seven no statistically significant trend was observed. Only in 16 is there evidence of a decl-ine in income co-ncentration over the long term.''

The 16 were small countries and the 45 incl-uded China. In India the strong trend of decline in poverty proportions in the Eighties stopped, but at least ineq-uality did not rise. ``The rise was universal in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Un-ion, almost universal in Latin America, common in OECD, and frequent in Asia,'' reports WIDER. If you want to check this out yourself, do so at http;//www.wider.unu.edu/ wiid/wiid.htm and download the World Income Inequality Database. Happy surfing.

The really khatta part was the hijacking. The first thing to do is not to listen to thefellows who have a sociological explanation for our failure to protect our people. The expert who said that we are inefficient was not quite fair to those who succeed in ma-ny missions. The Kargil heroes could have said that the enemy was at vantage point on the heights and given his inability to dislodge us in Siachen as the excuse. But they didn't and expelled the enemies with great courage.

Ten years ago when hundreds of pirates invaded the Maldives, the arguments for inaction must have been there-our-people-will-get kill-ed. Other countries would have intervened if we had given them en-ough time. But India has a mobile and independent division built at great expense. A brigade landed at the Maldives, immobilised or killed the criminals and a young Sikh lieutenant got President Gayuum out of jail and handed him a letter from the Prime Minister. No two situations are the same, but for territory and security the fight will always be bitter.

We have to make sure that in emergencies, the best are incommand and give them the confidence that we will back them up, even when they make mistakes. This is the task of the millennium and I am sure it will be addressed.

It is now quite obvious that security as we have always argued in this column is a holistic affair and has to take into account the steps the enemy will take. He will have to be convinced that it is not in his interest to stop India. We have to nurture again the strategic and historic links we have in Central Asia. Not many years ago, India was a factor to re-ckon with in Kirghistan, Kazakhistan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia, apart from Afghanistan.

These co-untries were not talked about, although they are not far from Kandahar. We must strengthen our frontiers outside India.