presumably that will be music to san and friends.
but look closely at the graphic. with practically zero investment, agriculture is still growing at a reasonable rate.
with enormous investment (including in roads, electricity, etc. which are mostly targeted towards industry), its growth is not that much greater.
which means industry is not so efficient in its use of inputs as agriculture is.
btw, this is written by simon cox, not by james "i simply love pakistanis" astill, who i think also writes the 'banyan' column in 'the atlanticist' which is very rude to india.
3 comments:
India has over 50% cultivatable land. It has been drastically under-used that is true. However a nation in the post-industrial age can never be a superpower if it does not have a solid industrial base. China had the largest economy in the world during the 19th century, they eventually saw what occurred when they did not industrialize quickly enough. They were invaded, drugged and humiliated.
It is not a zero-sum game, however. Money alloted for agriculture already, does not necessarily need to go into industrialization.
In fact building infrastructure and productive facilities with sovereign credit, can be done so, as China has proved. The US also proved this when it was industrialized during the 19th and early 20th centuries. This gave both the US and China, not only a powerful productive base (not so much for the US anymore), but also gave the population higher living standards and world class military capability. India will never be recognized on the world stage, as long as it continues to have its flings with Pakistan a fourth rate power. China understands this, and routinely disregards India's territorial claims. China knows that they can always use the Pakistan attack dog directly, or the maoists in the NE indirectly against India.
i just wrote a paper on food security, and if my fellow-author approves, i will post it. the point is that given the uncertainties of global warming, it is a fair bet that food will become more and more precious over time. therefore it makes sense to grow food and related products on our good land (the figure is 54% arable, cf. china+tibet 14% and us also 14%). as food prices have gone up over the last year, 100 million people worldwide have joined the ranks of the hungry, a large % of that in india. unless there is a way of feeding all these people, the dreams of industrialization are just pipe-dreams.
india mainly exports raw materials like zinc,organic chemiacls, cotton, processed steel and imports finished products weapons, fertilizers, foreign brands. we are paying for the services of someone else and we are paying them well too. a uneducated waitress in australia earns 25 dolars an hour for serving food wiht an attitude while a humble I.T. guy in chennai gets 4000 rs per month(200 hrs).
well being is - actually consuming enough resources so that you can be healthy , good looking , attractive and making others want to be like you. so import more raw materials for our consumption so that we dont starve- we all know whats the HDI for india- so start consuming. if you are worried abt rupee weakening- it doesnt matter coz then we can maintain our dominance i I.T. outsourcing for which we have a lot of competition arising form other asian countries.
so whatever industrialisation, trading you do - make sure that resources flow more into india rather than away from us.
i wud say that agriculture is the backbone. we do not need HVAC homes or SUVs but feed our starving population. we need to focus more on agriculture rather than what we have to produce(industrially) for the rest of the world. India is already hot- we dont need more wastes or polution but we need to clean up our air.
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