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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Obama to India: keep your people poor The Obama administration has made it clear it wants to shove India into not producing more affordable power. After all, the poorer India stays, the lower its carbon footprint, right?
Delhi is perhaps the most polluted city on the planet. In a very rough estimate, Bloomberg News calculated that President Obama would lose 6 hours of his life following a brief visit to the city last month. Cars, diesel generators, coal burning – all of these sources pump out noxious pollution that fogs the ambient air.
Obama losing six hours of his life? Well I agree that is horrible but at least it is better than nothing.
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Sadly Mr Obama need not worry.
Industrial production is not rising much in India – and it will not improve in the near future.
India has a fiscal deficit (a budget deficit) of about 4.5% of GDP – vast for a developing country (that should be running a budget surplus).
The previous Congress Party government established government benefits and “free” public services that can not possibly be afforded by a developing country such as India – actually developed countries can not afford them in the long term either, but that is another matter.
So sadly, tragically, – Mr Obama need not worry about India becoming a First World country.
I wish he did have to worry.
Of course the United States itself – with its impossible “entitlement” programs, and its credit bubble financial system, and its government regulations (and unionised refineries) strangling everything……
Well you finish the comment yourselves.
India is not going to become a First World country – I wish it would, but it is not.
And the United States (and ourselves) are not going to stay First World countries. Not for very much longer.
Not with a population that thinks, for example, that wages and conditions should be determined by government regulations – not supply-and-demand.
Try telling the truth to people – especially “educated” people.
See what happens.
A country does not need to become “First World” for things to improve out of all recognition. India has hugely developed over the last twenty years as the economy has slowly been prized out of the deadening hand of the Indian State, and it will continue to do so. So I’m going to ignore your suicide note comment as I fully expect my daughter to live in a much richer and better India than I grew up in.
The Nehru/Ghandi Socialist faction has screwed India for 60 plus years. Paul Marks seems to think so as well. Of course with friends like Obama, India will have to go uphill even harder.
Obama can push India on coal use but he sure gave the Chicoms a pass with that agreement that China has to limit carbon by 2030 which more or less said: “If China feels like it that would be dandy, but no big deal if they can’t”.
Obama’s opinion doesn’t count for much in India and I don’t know many of my countrymen who think of Obama or America generally as “friends”. Not enemies, but certainly not friends, and that’s hardly a new thing.
it is of course a mixed-bag. Just look at the two Koreas. One is a medieval hell-hole presided over by a dynastic tyranny and the other is prosperous. This happened in less than a lifetime (well, less than an RoK lifetime – not sure about the DPRK). And the irony, the bitter irony was that the North was the richer and more industrialsed part around the time of the Korean War. Comrades Kim – you deserve to be so ronery. Well, you deserve an interview…
O-numb-nuts opinion doesn’t count for much anywhere beyond the reach of the Federal tyranny’s thugs. He is, at the same time, an even nastier piece of work and a bigger fool than Baby Bush. And that will remain the supreme achievement of his life.
I LOLed.
*Nails down blackboard*
Arun, interesting to read your comments. I believe India will continue developing, provided it ignores the advice of cozy elites from countries that are themselves busy self-destructing.
Mr. Thakur is correct, the President of the United States has very little influence amongst the Indian political class and wider Indian opinion. India did not develop as an integral part of the bipolar worlds of the Cold War, and so see no reason to view the United States as having the same interests we have. We are very aware we must stand up to China alone and this is why we are a nuclear power as much as worries about Pakistan, because no one really trusts America when things become difficult.
Indian people are often deeply suspicious of American motives, and such utterances by Mr. Obama will strike many as exactly the sort of double standards one might expect from the leading developed nation. We must look to our own problems of corruption and excessive state interference in everything, and pay no attention whatsoever to the unwise and expensive blandishments of others.
True enough. As am Australian, I dread the day that the Chinese take up Cricket. We might then need to have a combined Indo-Australian team to get back the Ashes!
I do not deny that the “Permit Raj” was partly reversed some years ago and this real (although partial) deregulation led to considerable improvement.
But THE FACTS ARE THE FACTS.
Saying “I am confident my daughter will live a better life” is just waffle.
Have the “free” benefits and services been established?
Yes they have.
Can they be afforded?
No they can not.
So what are you going to do to get these benefits and services repealed?
If the answer is “nothing” then stop waffling about the “better life” your daughter is going to have.
No amount of “compassion” or “hope” alters the fact that 1+1=2.
That may very well be, Paul, but surely you have to admit that
1 – 1 = 75.
Your “facts” do not become more compelling in capital letters, nor your comment any less a pathetic display of your ignorance of India. Its you who do nothing and then waffle in self indulgent despair while politically engaged people like me work to advance deregulation. Even if Modi does not deliver everything, if you cannot see which way the currents are flowing then you’re the fool I took you for initially.
There is no reason to insult Paul like that. He is not a fool, and he just wants to see proof.
Let us hope that Modi is as good as his word.
I think that China and India are destined to be the two great rivals within Asia, and the world can only hope that the rivalry doesn’t break out into open warfare. If it came down to such a war, I think Australia would support India, as the Chinese are getting quite aggressive in the South China Seas. But i think we’d all be better off without such conflicts. So how do we cool the Chinese down?
By all the countries on their borders uniting as one when they sabre-rattle, so they have troubles on all their borders, instead of being able to pick them off, one by one.
Can you arrange such a treaty?