Wednesday, November 29, 2006

High Growth Of Economy Of India & China Causing Sleepless Nights?

I always read about rapid progress of India's economy with avid interest but harboured some doubts at the same time. It excited me to imagine India being ranked the third largest economy in the world by the year 2010. Those forecasts have been made, after all, based on facts and figures; the international watchdogs and analysts corroborate the same even as I fail to get any glimpse as though the same might be taking place obscurely.
The annual deliberations between the Confederation of British Industry and the government of United Kindom, interestingly, have removed remaining doubts from my mind as I learnt who was saying what. The Chancellor of Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has warned "Over the next fifteen years, up to half the world's future growth will come from India and China. By 2020, the G-7 share of growth will fall just to one-third". I quote from The Times of India what George Osborne, the right-hand man of David Cameron, the leader of Tories had told the Confederation of British Industry - "How are we going to compete against countries with low wages and high ambitions? There are quite a lot of lazy assumptions out there that we need to confront. There's the assumption that we'll do the clever stuff and we'll move up the value chain, and leave the Chinese and Indians to do cheap things. Let me tell you no one has told them that." Paradoxically, U.K. and other developed countries are now getting scared of the economic boom taking place in India and China. As reported in Economic Times, the US treasure secretary, Henry Paulson, wailed "We cannot tell the developing countries that we benefited from free markets, but we will not allow them to do the same. It's morally wrong - we are condemning them to being a perpetual underclass."
The cat is now out of the bag. The globalisation mantra chanted for years to the developing countries like India and China for allowing MNCs and FDIs (to exploit the natural resources as well as to escape from the rigid claws of environmental controls in their own countries) has begun to backfire. The disciples i.e. India and China having mastered the mantra are now ready to take on their gurus.
I think India has to wait patiently for poetic justice to be delivered. What do you say?

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