Posted on 05/27/2013 4:44:39 AM PDT by TexGrill
With its rapid growth, contribution to global recovery following the global financial crisis in 2008 China is center stage. Little attention has been paid to Asia’s two other giants —Indonesia and India. Although less noticed than China, the two countries were also resilient during the crisis and show promising futures.
India and Indonesia have more similarities than one could imagine. They stand among the most populated countries in the world, with India being the second and Indonesia the fourth.
Together they are home to more Muslims than the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the Americas combined. The two countries are also among the world’s three largest democracies.
Moreover, the countries’ first leaders, in some sense, shared identical characteristics. Both Nehru and Soekarno were nationalists in their political outlook and at the same time, socialists in their approach to development.
Although their paths in early development policies and outcomes were parallel, they diverged as Indonesia began to initiate reforms in 1967 with its new leader, Soeharto. Indonesian strategies to restore macroeconomic stability worked and succeeded to bring the country into the group of lower-middle income economies by the early 1990s.
In contrast, it was not until the late 1980s that India began to introduce liberalization measures. In fact, India’s dirigisme had been so firm that in the first four decades after independence, the economy only grew at a slow pace of 3 percent (Thee, 2012).
(Excerpt) Read more at thejakartapost.com ...
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