In India, Dynamism Wrestles With Dysfunction

The New York Times ^ | 8 Jun 2011 | Jim Yardley

[Cronos]

With its shiny buildings and galloping economy, Gurgaon is often portrayed as a symbol of a rising “new” India, yet it also represents a riddle at the heart of India’s rapid growth: how can a new city become an international economic engine without basic public services? How can a huge country flirt with double-digit growth despite widespread corruption, inefficiency and governmental dysfunction?...

In Gurgaon and elsewhere in India, the answer is that growth usually occurs despite the government rather than because of it. India and China are often considered to be the world’s rising economic powers, yet if China’s growth has been led by the state, India’s growth is often impeded by the state. China’s authoritarian leaders have built world-class infrastructure; India’s infrastructure and bureaucracy are both considered woefully outdated...

“In India, it is not because of the government,” she said, explaining how thingsFaced with so many urban headaches, though, civic activists like Colonel Singh are pushing the government for change, or simply making change on their own. Colonel Singh leads an umbrella group of residents’ associations that have started volunteer vigilance groups as watchdogs against crime.

get done. “It is in spite of the government.”

Another civic activist, Latika Thukral, a former Citigroup employee: “If people like us don’t stand up for our rights, our country will not change,” she said. “The tipping point has come in India.”

[Cronos]

India is an utter contrast to China. China is where Big Brother Govt does everything for you, while India seems like the extreme case of libertarianism

NOTE: this is a heavily excerpted article -- the actual one is 5 pages long and is a good read.

[Little Pig]

Living in India, I can say that it’s not all the government’s fault. There are a number of quirks to the cultural psyche that cause serious problems in trying to bring India into the 21st century: an almost congenital inability to project-plan seems to be one. Major projects here are either done “good enough” or done in a piecemeal fashion where only the most immediate detail is focused on. Buildings here (at least where I am) are rarely entirely “true”, and important elements of the infrastructure like plumbing are not planned-for in advance. This attitude of not thinking things through is also, I believe, a significant contributor to the litter/garbage problem here.

My personal theory is that culturally, India is in a way “aping” the actions of the former British colonisers, without really understanding the fundamentals that lay behind those actions, like planning all parts of a building, or a road project, or that the British likely had Indian workers tasked to clean up the litter they threw on the ground, or that the British expected any Indians on the road to yield to them and drove however they wanted.

I hope that India will overcome these cultural idiosyncrasies, as well as the sclerotic government that is obviously preventing India from being all it could be.

[Cronos]

This attitude of not thinking things through is also, I believe, a significant contributor to the litter/garbage problem here.

Is this true of all the various "nations" in India? I know the northerners like the Punjabis are physically, linguistically, historically and even racially different from those in say Madras or the north-east of India

[John O]

In Gurgaon and elsewhere in India, the answer is that growth usually occurs despite the government rather than because of it.

This is a worldwide truism, not just in India.

Growth occurs despite government rather than because of it.