this prof must be san's pal: insistent that cheap manufacturing is a must.
well, i think there is a good case to be made for indian exceptionalism. india is not like other nations, it is not a 'developing' nation, but a 'redeveloping' nation, one that was the economic superpower for millennia.
the economist (this is a letter published by them) probably agrees with this conventional wisdom.
Walk before you can run
SIR – After reading your leader on technology leapfrogs one should not conclude that it makes sense for developing economies to jump "from agriculture straight to high-tech industries" ("Behind the bleeding edge", September 23rd). Granted, such jumps may be productive at the level of single commodities, but countries with large agricultural sectors containing significant surpluses of labour, including India, which you cited as an example, cannot afford to skip past a development phase of unskilled labour-intensive industries and low-tech services if they are not to experience diminished growth and a level of income distribution with dire poverty consequences.
Gustav Ranis
Frank Altschul Professor Emeritus of International Economics
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
No comments:
Post a Comment