Feeding POWER and Friedman on India

Interesting reading:

• Fantasies of power in muddled India by Ramachandra Guha (in case that link is not working, pl see here!!!)

• Poverty falls fastest in high growth of GDP period

• Growth as a tool to alleviate poverty 

• "expenditure onsubsidies, which was 1.6% of GDP when the NDA demitted office, rose to awhopping 2.6% of GDP in FY12—and that’s not calculating the under-recoveriesborne by PSU oil firms; add this and the current subsidy expenditure may wellrise to 3.6% of GDP."

There is a interesting lines in one of Prof Milton Friedman's article which blinks the current political situation of Indian polity. Here is the lines from his 1999 article "No Third way to the market":

• Today, the "market" is said to be either utterly triumphant or a grave threat. Politicians everywhere quest for a "third way" around its rigors, yearning for "national champions" in industries like telecoms capable of holding off globalization. The market, however, is simply a mechanism that can be mobilized for any number of purposes. Depending on the way it is used, the market may contribute to social and economic development or inhibit it.

In the same article Friedman explains the bicycle industry's in Punjab in India:

• In India's Punjab there was a plant producing bicycles. Government rationed steel to users rather than selling it at a market price. The bicycle producer could not get the amount of steel needed at the official price. However, there was a private market in finished or unfinished steel products. So the bicycle manufacturer supplemented his rations through buying semifinished steel products and melting them down - hardly an efficient way to convert iron ore and coal into bicycles.

Read from a Focal Point for Friedman @ 100 a list of very interesting articles by Friedman.