Hey Mrs “gradualism”

That is sounds Mr. Surjit S Bhalla’s article in FE!! But do note the following a bit from the article.

• It is worth recalling why we have a problem in the first place. Why is it that even the World Bank president is calling for a new gold order? It is because the currency system is out of whack. And why is the system broken? There are 82 countries in the world with a population of more than 10 million and there is only one country, one currency, that is accused of “currency manipulation”—China. And China is once again, after a gap of several hundred years, at the centre of attention. It is big, brash, and some might even say arrogant. It wants its currency to move, but move ever so slowly.

• The spin mantra of China is that they are a responsible country, and that they will adjust the currency upwards, but do it gradually. Now who can object to gradualism, especially in India, where there has been nothing but gradualism. We are like that only, though some might add that our democratic framework allows us to move only gradually. Coming back to China’s gradualism—can anyone point to even one major policy on their part that was gradual in the last 60-odd years? The Great Leap Forward wasn’t exactly gradual, nor was the Cultural Revolution when after a Mao moment’s notice, engineers were turned into peasants. Nor was the one-child policy of 1974 gradual. The economic reforms instituted in 1978 were not gradual either. Indeed, China is the envy of the democratic world because it does not have to confront the perils of democratic gradualism.