While there is much enthusiasm in big cities and among the young about joining Europe and seeking new opportunities in the West, there is a strong cultural and even political attraction elsewhere about the Russian connection. Many do not like the prospect of free migration into the country that may result from joining Europe.
Furthermore, a very high domestic savings rate powered the investment driving China’s development, and it also enjoyed very high productivity levels. Chapter two argues that China and India have versions of ‘state capitalism’ with a complicated mix of private and public sectors. Tracing the history of liberalization in both, Cable considers ‘creative destruction’ and the varying ability to tolerate its social costs. While China’s early reform period was often ruthless, Xi Jinping is now far more cautious. And although India has not matched China’s earlier zeal, liberalizing trends continue.
However, while these are valid points, the new ‘norm’ of calorie intake cannot be arbitrarily arrived at without a systematic assessment of the population structure, work patterns and bio-medical status of the population. An exercise like that, involving professional nutritionists, statisticians and economists will be more than welcome periodically to see how the norms of poverty are changing.
The chapter highlights increased financial inclusion via UPI, economic formalization, and improved productivity through digital business models as key developmental drivers, but warns against complacency. The concentration of data power, a global public good in a few hands remains a regulatory challenge.
To avoid tax and regulatory burdens in their home countries, several shipping firms would register their companies in Panama, Liberia, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, and other Caribbean imperial outposts. These registries became offshore tax havens. With a new flag-of-convenience registered in the Bahamas in the late 1980s,
For Gulfishan Khan, one such bureaucrat, intellectual and historian was the author of Siyar-ul-Muta’khkhirin (An Overview of the Modern Times), Ghulam Husain Khan Tabatabai (born 1727). With deep connections in the old Mughal world of Delhi, Agra, Patna, and Murshidabad, Ghulam Husain wrote the book in 1783 for his British patrons in Calcutta. A fine English translation of the work was almost simultaneously prepared by a scholar, later identified as Haji Mustafa. Considered to be one of the best historical works produced in the late eighteenth century, it offers ‘a description of glorious past, as well as a sad narrative of the Mughal decline, and above all an indigenous critique of the impact of the early colonial rule’ (p. 46).