Indias Development Odyssey Subramanian Kapur Varshney Lamba

TITLE: Arvind Subramanian, Devesh Kapur, Ashutosh Varshney, Rohit Lamba - “India’s Development Odyssey” CHANNEL: Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) DATE: 2026-04-24 ---TRANSCRIPT--- Uh good afternoon. Um and I’d like to start by thanking the organizers of this conference. Uh George Washington University, Elliot School, IIE and especially AJ Chibar, I think AJ is somewhere here. Um I know this panel is all that stands between you and the reception. uh but I promise we have we have enough um sort of stuff which will be discussed which will make it worth your while to spend the next hour and a half with us.

Through the course of the day we heard a myriad of speakers discuss topics centered around the idea of making India an advanced economy by 2047. Prior sessions discussed uh regulatory con constraints, challenges facing trade in a protectionist world, the challenge and promise of artificial intelligence and the criticality of addressing the gender gap. This panel actually is a perfect culmination of today’s conference as the aim is to delve deep into India’s economic and developmental trajectory. To help us undertake this journey is the recently released book a sixth of humanity India’s development odyssey which attempts to shed light on the India story its democracy its nationhood its economic journey and the successes and failures along the way. Um we’re privileged to have a wonderful panel. Uh the first two speakers are going to be the authors. Dr. Arvin Subramanyam is senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International uh and public affairs. Dr. Dr. Dvesh Kapoor is the Star Foundation Professor of South Asian Studies at John’s Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. Um I’d invite Dish to come up and start. Thank you. Thank you Haberna for the kind introduction. uh just to thank uh Haj and the organizer at George Washington for inviting Arun and me to share some thoughts on our book. Uh so just to give you a just a broad sense of the book and then of course we’ll cover only very selective parts of the book. So uh just to give you a brief sort of broad uh background of the book uh I’m I’m a political scientist or is an economist that may be contested also. That is true. I mean both of these could be contested but uh broadly speaking our idea behind the book is that development is not just about economics. It’s a much more broad-based uh sort of journey and we’ve tried to write this book sort of reflecting that idea. Uh I think the core idea thread that runs in this book is it’s very much datadriven. We did not start with strong hypothesis. We read and put together about 3,000 official government reports and the data that we have in this book comes from his original data from these reports. And so the story in the book is told through this data. Uh this allows us to make sort of three types of comparisons. comparisons over time, comparisons across states and comparisons of India with other developing countries most notably of course with China which is the other giant but also with a range of other sort of emerging markets. So a core theme uh that runs through the book is this idea of precautiousness uh to be understood as unusual sequencing uh democracy before the development services before manufacturing. Globalization of highkl talent via migration before low-skilled exports through trade. put welfare before providing public goods, state capitalism before building public infrastructure, uh physical capital before human capital, higher education before primary education, enacting laws galore without putting together implementation capabilities. So and so what the book sort of sort of asks is that the first fundamental of course precocious choice that India made was the choice of the democracy before the development and so I’m going to talk about that and then arr so so so to start this graph sort of sets the stage. You think of sort of poor models you know very very broadly defined as models. There is the western model here represented by US UK and that’s that democracy grows as per capita incomes grow. The second model is the East Asian model here represented by Korea. And in that model, first you get the development until your sort of middle income before the democracy comes. The third model is China very rapid growth. No the democracy. India on the other hand at very very low levels of income went for the democracy in sharp contrast to these other models of growth. uh now here you see the income at full franchise and this is of you know western countries largely but but if you take a a sort of longer list you’ll see the same uh you know uh there were a couple of countries uh like Sri Lanka just a couple of years before India that gave full franchise but no one at but India still stands out at how low a level of income it gives full franchise. The other interesting thing is that it gives franchise to men and women at the same time. That was also uncommon at that time. Uh and remember at that time India is a very patriarchical society. But at the time of independence it was a much more patriarchical society. So the fact again this was an unusual choice because the constituent assembly as some of you know was almost entirely male to to dominated and yet it made these very momentous choices. So what were the payoffs? What we argue is that look, state and nation building worldwide is always a violent process. Period. Uh what stands out about India is how little violence that occurred. Now usually as I’m sure many of you aware you read news about India, there’s always some violence somewhere going on. You know that is localized violence. That’s not mass violence. Mass violence is something like the US civil war. 2% of the population is killed. If you apply that to India, that would be 30 million people. That’s what we mean by mass of violence. So here’s a group of countries, you know, if you look at China, 50s, 60s, 40, 50, 60 million depending on the estimates. Vietnam, huge levels of violence in the course of nation building. What India stands out as you see in this graph in the course of nation building, state building, how relatively very low levels of violence and we argue that in most countries nation building was built around a single language, a single ethnicity, a single religion. India was exceptional in that democracy was the key instrument of nation building and the sorts of things that are inherent in the democracy compromise etc etc is what we argue was had this hugely positive effect in keeping mass violence in check. But that was also true when you look at measures of order or one measure of the disorder in the economy. High inflation especially hyperinflation is a measure of disorder in an economy. And here also we’ve we’ve the what you see here is India uh and a set of comparator developing countries like Turkey, Korea, Mexico, Brazil etc. And here again you see how India they by and large avoided any bouts of hyperinflation. There was one around 7374 after the first oil shock but otherwise again compared to other countries. So what you see is how democracy and we’ll give you know if we can talk about it later how that helped India build order both political and economic now but let us be also clear right that the democracy does not mean that everything wonderful follows. Uh there are costs. One of the costs we show is uh this is a term that Harwin sort of brought to brought out sort of a kamadenu to democracy. Kamin who as some of you know is the Hindu goddess who gives which gives to everyone you know some milk and the Indian state gives something to everyone subsidies you know whether you’re a rich farmer or you are you are a big industrialist or even a small person you will get some cash transfer A B C D and you will and of course you give more subsidies and you include them less in the tax. So what this shows is that the surprising thing is that in this period India grew very rapidly. It was one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Generally when you grow very fast tax revenues increase, fiscal deficits tend to come down. But India has had by far the highest fiscal deficit in this period. This circle represents uh state-owned enterprises. If you add that the deficit is even higher. We’ve not we don’t have we couldn’t find data on stateowned enterprises losses for the other countries. So we’ve now so we’ve only given that. So that’s one of the things that we argue uh was one of the costs that that you see. Another cost that you see is slowly slowly over time India became almost a perpetual electoral machine. And what this what this table shows you is that in the first period you know what we call the Nuan period till 1967 about a quarter of India’s population went to elections every year. Post 2000 it’s more than half. the election free interval the last two rows for the center it drops from about five years and now it’s uh it’s about 1.2 two years. If you take last few years, it’s it’s going to touch about one year. And by that I mean national elections, state elections, panchayat elections, urban local bodies and all of these are beginning have absolutely contributed to a shorter time horizon for for politicians on what policies they’re prepared to spend their political capital on. Now the big this issue of the democracy and development has been one of the big big questions in the development literature and the and the usual thing Hamagloo at all have been sort of really behind this that you know there’s a sort of broadly linear relationship between the two. There are two however two outliers. But those two outliers account for onethird of the world’s population and that’s China and India. Relative to its income, China should be much more democratic. Relative to its democracy, India should be much richer. Both of them are outliers to this broad general proposition. But India is an outlier even among the democracies. So what you see is that on the upper left there’s a whole group of countries that were relatively authoritarian in their development journey. But on the on the right hand side you see that India is an outlier even among the democracies in the much lower level of per capita income relative to where it stands on the the democracy index. I’ll turn it over like to Arvin. Uh thanks Dish. Uh thanks uh AJ and others for u in uh inviting us to this panel. really delighted to be here. Um so as as Dish said um you know the book has you know it is formidable uh for any reader and there’s a lot going on. Uh so DH focused on uh you know one of the precociousness uh which is you know democracy for development. Um and I’m going to focus on you know something that might be of you know some interest to this audience which is you know economic growth and economic policy and um I if the wise sober mature were not here to restrain uh me uh I would have said uh everything you think you know about Indian growth and economic policy is wrong. Uh uh but but Dish would not allow me to say that. But let me try and push that argument uh as well. Yeah. So basically India has had four kind of broad regimes. Policy what we call planning uh I think the 80s that’s 50 to 80 uh 80 to 91 is what we would call was the first true era of import substitution. uh you know the neoliberal era post 1991 and we characterize the last the post global financial crisis as the era of welfareism which we can talk about more later. Uh but essentially uh we you know just to make the argument a bit stark are going to you know uh contest both the left interpretation of all these uh regimes and the right rendition of all these regimes. So, so just to give you one example, I think this the first 30 years is thought of as import substitution. Uh, and our contention is no, it is not import substitution because when you do import substitution, you protect uh domestic firms against foreign competition and therefore you want to promote domestic entrepreneurship and and and so on uh uh in industry. But what we turned around and did had this horrendous system of industrial licensing domestically. So we thwarted the domestic private sector instead of the aim of import substitution being to promote both the domestic private and public sector. So it created in fact a scarcity regime not an import substitution regime. The second way in which we differ uh from uh uh uh the the conventional rendition of this especially from the left. If you look at the works of uh you know Amata Sen, Shukamoy Chakravarti, Prab Bdan and more recent the received view on the left is that actually Indian growth was not too bad in the first 30 years especially compared to the previous 30 years. A and and what this chart shows is that it compares Indian per capita GDP amongst a whole all other countries in the world based on the Madison data set and that number 79 says 79% of countries uh in 1950 had higher per capita GDP than India did. By 1980 India actually fell behind all other countries. So it was not the case that this was you know India did really well and this is true not just on you know all these uh right guys right-wing guys cared about growth it was true on the other transformations poverty was high and stagnant educational attainment was very poor uh India collapsed in terms of its trade uh around the world so so the first three decades were actually not import substitution and they were not great from a point of view of economic performance and we compare India with China uh as dish said one of the comparisons we do this is the black market exchange rate premium in the first 30 years China way above India. The point here is to say that India, China was a mess in terms of economic and political disorder that Dh said India was so good at and despite that we could not parlay that because actually by at 1950 India China broadly the same level 62 China fell behind India but by 1980 India had pulled ahead of China on GDP per capita agricultural productivity all the social indicators. So that’s that’s kind of shows how poorly India did in the first 30 years. Now Deves spoke about you know one of the precautiousness emphasizing you know state capitalism before public infrastructure. You know Suril Khalani in his lovely book has a line about you know the the temples of modern India. India fell in love with the idea of concrete and we say no we didn’t fall in love enough with the idea of concrete because we did state capitalism and not enough uh uh public infrastructure in fact in the book you know based on all the fantastic data that Dish collected from all these reports we show you that infrastructure was was was a disaster in the first 30 30 years there was one bridge over the Ganga one of Dish’s you know factoids one bridge over the Ganga one bridge over the Brahmaput Putra that was the state of public infrastructure and instead we emphasized state capitalism and there we put together data from 1970 all the public sector enterprises at the central level and the main ones at the state level and what you see here is that essentially the rate of return in public sector enterprises central ones was well below whatever opportunity cost either the social opportunity cost or some minimal private opportunity cost central public sector enterp enterprises were below and of course state public enterprises much worse and which leads it which led us to uh you know to coin a phrase in the book or a theme in the book anything that the center does badly in India the states do much worse. So, so when when you focus you know when you blame Delhi for everything please be careful and this is across you know uh Dish has all this excellent work on on the state in India you look at the courts you look at the police you look at the uh public service commissions you look at the finance commissions everything is much worse at the state level than the central level and then we quantify what the opportunity cost of this investment in public enterprises essentially the total cost is between 1 and a4 and 2 and a half% in GDP wide margin because you know it’s difficult to get precise numbers just every year every year for 50 years one and a half to two and a quarter% and just to give it texture center could have doubled its investment in infrastructure every year had uh central public enterprises earned a reasonable return states could have invested 75% to 150% more had state enterprises earned a reasonable rate of return and the same thing we do the same for public sector banks banks and here the key thing is how because of all the burdens imposed on public on all banks including public sector banks look at the last two lines how much commercial lending took place in India 8.6 6 to 25% over 50 years. China and Korea you know 100 150% 200% of GDP. So that was the kind of opportunity cost of public sector banks in India. I won’t go through all the four periods of how we misunderstood but this is something that’s not enough recognized. So we know that post liberalization you know India grew gang busters. But here’s what I think is is not appreciated enough. India achieved in those 20 years post 1991 East Asian growth and East Asian trade in terms of outcomes but it did it without East Asian policies and without East Asian structural transformation without East Asian policies. I need to emphasize this in Washington today because the World Bank recently has done this miaakulpa saying you know the earlier report written on East Asia was a floppy disc which has been overtaken by industrial policy is the new floppy disc for example I can guarantee you in 30 years time there will be a new floppy disc in which industrial policy is similarly consigned to the dust bin because India is an exception India’s east Asian growth and policies was achieved without industrial policy, without mercantalism. A a and plain vanilla Washington consensus policies gave us East Asian growth and East Asian trade, but not the East Asian structural transformation, which is which is the second dimension of economic precautiousness. You know, too much agriculture for too long, too little formal manufacturing for too long and doing high skill services quite early. We call this prolonged ruralization, premature de-industrialization and precautious serviceification. The international counterpart of that is on the left hand side again uh based on you know dish’s work on you know the Indian diaspora. Uh we put together data on what this shows is what is the family income or per capita income of in various ethnic groups in the US uh and compare it with the per capita GDP back to home. India as you can see is the highest. The average Indian earns 32% more than his or her counterpart in India. And this shows that basically Indian highskilled talent overexploited globalization through migration. The cost of that is the right hand side which is which shows on the y-axis country share uh in in global exports of low-skilled goods. X-axis its share in population and again like the chart that D showed you two outliers India and China India and China similar labor force but India has 3 to 4% of global exports low-skll exports China has about 40 45% of global low-skll uh exports so we overexploited globalization but we shortchanged the Indian labor force low-skll labor force by not providing enough low skill jobs for Indians and that’s the kind of contrast you see big surprise on growth in India is so we compiled and it’s a big surprise of Dvi me if you start the clock in 1980 and run it for 40 years what you find is that one so so you know if you go to you know Latians is Delhi all the wistful murmuring will be why can’t we be like China right because Chinese growth is fantastic what this chart shows if you start the clock Back in 1980, onethird of India, onethird of India, the southern states, western states, Marachad and Hana grew almost as rapidly as China and for as long. Think about that. That means we should no longer just ask the question why don’t we do as well as China. We should instead ask the question why doesn’t the twothirds of India name mainly the Hindi heartland do as well as the remaining one-third of India which actually did almost as well as China did. So I conclude here uh the magic and paradox of India is what D spoke about sustaining democracy at such and something that Ashu has written about quite extensively as well. uh the underrecognized achievement dive spoke about you know nation building uh order state building using democracy that’s the kind of instrumental benefit of democracy that’s underrecognized including the economic disorder the delayed and partial success we showed on the economic front the durable disappointment you see in human development index India what I showed you earlier on per capita GDP India does even worse because it started off in 1950 63% of countries better than India higher human even today 2021 we have actually slipped over 70 years so that’s kind of the durable disappointment the abiding irony dish gave two examples democracy gave uh and democracy took away the kamu and and the perennial election the looming tragedy of India so in the book you know we don’t give any prescriptions uh deliberately We can talk about why but we do say do no harm in the following sense that these great precious fragile achievements of democracy uh you know one idea of India strong institutions good relations between the center and the state all those are in under threat and if you look around the world you see how fragile and precaut precious these achievements are we should not squander them going forward. Thank you. Um thanks uh thank you Dish and Arvind. Um we now have two discussions uh for the book. Dr. Ashoto is the Soul Goldman professor of international studies and political science at Brown University and Dr. Rohit Lamba is assistant professor of economics at Cornell. Call on Ashoto to start. The title is of this comment is arresting multidisiplinarity exemplary data but a looming question and I’ll call uh call them KN&S they have written what will become an essential reference in India’s development it’s a truly veritable intellectual achievement comparisons make some people very unhappy, some people happy. So I’ll avoid referring to what it what it leaves behind which book which books it leaves behind this book. Why do I say this is a this will become an essential reference everyone will read it who deals with Indian development. It has what I would like to call a deeply necessary and highly cogent multid-disiplinarity. When economists used to write about political economy, they what they could not explain through purely economic measures, they would turn to politics for it. So political economy, politics is a residual there. Whereas politics is deeply integrated in this analysis. This is very this is why right and I think that’s why I think it is deeply necessary and I’ll say more about that. Um we know dish we know we know K as one of the ultimate data masters in a profession and here it is on display again one of the ultimate data masters. I published two books of his in my series um at Oxford University Press originality of reasoning and felicitus pros. I was going in the interest of time I was going to leave pros behind or plead pros out. Aperna says no no I’ll give you two minutes extra if you if you if you read if you if you read what you’ve written about their prosicus pros not a small matter historians anthropologists and political theorists often murmur they are generally too polite to loudly complain that economists more so and political scientists less so cannot write well they try to write precisely But writing precisely and writing well are two distinct passions and skills in a sumptuously wanting manner. KS KN&S violate this commonly held dictum. How lovely it is to read their felicitously worded political economy often epigmatically phrased. Epigrammatic writing is very hard very tough. We know that when whoever has taken a class on writing knows that epigrammatic writing is very hard and they do it very well. Multiple disciplines, multiple project. So just look at one one of the several um analytical tang tangles in in doing multip multi multi multi-disciplinary work. Here is an example. Utility is the organizing principle of marketbased economics. Rights are the organizing principle of democracy, not utility. How should we combine the two? This is handled with remarkable dexterity. It’s it’s a hard thing to do. combining combining a utility based reasoning and rights based reasoning also even if democracy is absent development is not only my example above was about rights and democracy and utility but even if democracy is absent development is not only or not simply an economic matter as they wish as as K emphasized states have multiple goals and the pursuit of development is squarely lodged within such multiplicity For analytic adequacy, multi-disciplinary knowledge is required. In my own work, I wrote and I I obnoxiously tell you what the first three lines of my last book were. Independent India was born with multiple projects. Three projects were especially important. Securing national unity, bringing dignity and justice to those at the bottom of the social ladder, and eliminating mass poverty. KN&NS add a fourth project establishing order a necessary and original edition its obviousness make scholars ignore its significance why order midnight’s children were born in bloodshed and chaos a very violent partition anywhere they have actually better numbers than I’m producing here this is K has produced those numbers I couldn’t find them while I was writing it is somewhere in the very very early on in the discussion of order. Anywhere between half a million to a million deaths and up to 15 million migrations across the border all within just a few months made establishing order absolutely necessary. But the bigger point goes beyond the moment of partition. It is hobbsian a term KN&S often use or even huntingtonian a term they actually do not use and I let me add that it’s a small point. It’s not a very big point. Development requires political order. Development does not necessarily produce order. I’ll have I don’t have time to discuss this. I I wrote actually a small paper on this for the World Bank at one point. This this particular problem also democracy may require order and may is advisedly used here not necessarily requires may require order. Democratic rights or the pursuit of development cannot be properly pursued in conditions of mass insecurity. This is the this is basically the point here. Hence the fourth focus on order of security is absolutely right. State building was necessary for that. The first job of the state is Hobbesian/ Huntingtonian namely provision of security to its citizenry. We forget that in political economy and development generally speaking it’s good to get this back in a in a in a discussion about development. Indian distinctiveness. Um they they gave you uh 10 points about that. I’ll I’ll just I’ll I’ll pull three out. I think I’ll add a fourth also. Um preautious democracy. You heard uh it’s it it’s a it’s a it’s a almost a a defining feature. They could have produced that term here on you know on the front page. Precautious democracy meaning democracy before development. precautious reliance on services, meaning services before manufacturing. Welfare before public good. This is an absolutely original point. It’s not there in political economy. Welfare before public goods. Right? And then I think the fourth point I should add here um I should have added and I can add now is this skewed nature of globalization and the idea that India’s most educated overexploited globalization there was very little that it it did for the lowkilled and the and the poor. I mean lifted everyone in a way absolute poverty is down to single digits now but but compared to it could have been exploited more for low skilled that’s the point that’s a very very interesting way to put it precious democracy I’m a political scientist I’ll tell you what my discipline says um K is part at least partly belongs to that discipline um as a this is the first great recognition of Indian democracy by a major political scientist after 1945 Bington Moore in the great book social origins of dictatorship and democracy as a political species India does belong to the modern world at the time of Nehu’s death in ’ 64 political democracy had existed for 17 years it if imperfect the democracy was no mere sham political democracy may seem strange both in an Asian setting and one without an industrial revolution which is democracy before development idea right this is bington more in 1964 666 then two of the statements by Robert Dahal arguably we should always say arguably we can’t say who’s the best democracy scholar this is not how political scientists work who’s the best growth theorist economist will tell you right away number one this is number two is that’s not how we work so uh one of the best uh arguably arguably the best democracy theorist is Robert Dahl no more he’s died a few few years ago in the in his first book on democracy. He called India deviant case indeed a polyarchy a polyarchy is the term he used he invented for democracy actually existing democracies were called polararchies by actually existing democracies and democracy was used then in a very ideal sense what a democracy is as opposed to what actually existing democracy is that is a polyarchy a leading contemporary exception of democratic theory in his real magnumopus democracy and its critics in 1989 and then another uh decade later Adam Shavorski in in his magnum opus the odds against democracy in India were extremely high. So on the income and democracy point let me simply this is not something I’m doing originally let me simply summarize for you how how shorski Adam shorski etc came out on that h it is the same point done differently Adam shorski and his colleagues two of his students wrote democracy and development in 2001 the data set covered 141 countries between 1950 and 1990 income turned out to be the best predictor of democracy it correctly predicted the type of regime team in 77.5% of the cases when you want to know why how this can be done you can you basically calculate democracy years each year a democracy is democracy is democracy year then you add up and this is how you handle handle statistically you create a very large n and you handle this statistically only in 22.5% cases it did not no other predictor religion there’s a lot of argument in certain sections of of of political politics and rhetoric not political science science of Islam and democracy cannot coexist for example right this they said they don’t find any particular interest that correlation very interesting colonial legacy ethnic diversity international political environment no other predictor was as good as income India obviously in the latter 22.5% cases but you might also want to note this goes takes the argument beyond KN&S democracies that emerged from decolonization after the Second World War survived only in India which they mentioned Mauritius, Biz, Jamaica they mentioned it is on the right right right hand side of one of their graphs Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Wanoatu and to be shamefully um um u um uh prank about this. I before reading this I really did not know whereatu was really did not know okay so I’m shamefully confessing to that uh it is here because in the United N for the United Nations it’s a country the most surprising case is India quote from page 87 the odds against democracy in India were extremely high and he is Adam Shoreski a towering figure in our field is sometimes says says uh humorously that if that odds against democracy in India were negative there’s nothing called below zero you know when you calculate the odds so this is just his way of saying how low the odds were and all other and India if India is the biggest exception on the low income end Singapore which has not been mentioned here China has been mentioned again and again but Singapore is the greatest surprise on the high income end its per capita income is higher than that of UK, France, Germany and recently also So America higher than America. No nono rich country is undemocratic. China is not high income yet. It will be in a couple of years according to the bank. Singapore is now a smaller in my remaining 8 minutes. A smaller empirical issue first and then a larger point and I would like to see how they they respond to that. Was India the first universal franchise democracy in the global south? No. Silhouan Sri Lanka was historically the first as early as 1931 through Don mode per commission it got universal franchise including for women in under colonial rule in 1949 after its constitutional adoption also got dem universal franchise one year before India. India you can say India got constitutional India got democracy in 1950 at the with the adoption of the right and Costa Rica was there one year before us but you could argue that a political commitment to universal franchise democracy was made in the motil narrow committee report 19 one year after universal franchise came to Britain India’s freedom fighter said we will also have universal franchise just less than one year after that and confirmed several times that so in Sri Lanka A however democracy did not last so it’s not in the shorski data set it didn’t last right yeah and both countries were very small the only comparisons were China which was never democratic and to some extent Indonesia where democracy collapsed in the mid 1960s only to recover with the end of the regime in the late 1990s India is not the first universal franchise democracy in the global south but it is the largest one that also lasted. That’s the the the the precise way to put it. Now the bigger analytic issue I I note I first wrote I I that I note a Chinese envy in their argument but I think then I corrected myself that’s not it actually there with respect to democracy and development they are ambivalent and this is how the ambivalence goes KN&S by giving say by giving every group and region as ao uh as a a voice democracy forced the Indian nation out of the world’s most maddening diversity. Maddening diversity I should have put in quotes because they it’s your their term. It’s not only their term. That’s fundamentally right though also notably different one must use from the Hindu nationalist conception of whether democracy helped or hurt nation building. I’ve written quite a lot on this. We won’t have time to discuss it. If someone is interested then I can I can I can show you how Hindu nationalists actually argue democracy hurt India’s development. It should have been a very different kind of quality. Via n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n n nation building, democracy generated the KSKNs argue the foundations of development. Absent nationhood could India have developed perhaps not. It would have been consumed by large scale endemic violence rather instead of that this maddening diversity was focused on on it developed national feeling on the whole but democracy is also tax on development leading to lower development 580 to 591 where this is been developed at some length some examples no land reforms democracies don’t do land reforms beyond Kerala and Bengal We know that this is a this is an argument first proposed actually by Samuel Huntington in in in political order and changing societies. Land reforms cannot be undertaken in democracies. Welfare state before public goods had to give something to every interest for votes. That’s the Kadhenu democracy idea. Allowed elite manipulation higher education over mass literacy and perpetual elections. Every year 35% of Indian population involved in elections leading to the horror of they also use this term corrupt campaign finance. A problem India could never overcome. Elections every that is how much it’s an electionsheavy democracy. What else should be in democracy? We can discuss but once again that will I won’t have time for it. So here is the looming question. I have called it the southern variation. It you can make it more than southern. It’s also the west and now Hana if democracy was really a tax on development how did the south end up having Chinese growth rates quote from 5002 page 5002 of KN&S between 1980 and 2000 and they they extended to 2020 here you saw that right um China increases per capita income by a factor of 7.3 comparative figures for wellperforming states are India Indian states are Karnataka 7.4 4 Kerala 7.1 Tamil Nadu 6.9 and undivided Andra 6.8 ate roughly the same as China right India was peak growth this is a direct quotation India was peak growth China and as long for but only for about onethird of its population which is the point they they’ve also made here these trends have continued since 20 after 2000 also and they showed you the graph had data until 2020 so how did democracy not hurt development in the south And to complicate matters f further hana is now the highest per capita GDP state nearly 190% higher than the Indian average is democracy not known to be principled I don’t mean to hurt that theharani is here I know I know I mean I will I will say the same thing about UP does not have such a high per capita my my native state is is perpetually locked in a low income and not a particularly inspiring democracy trap either right So this is I would apply it to except in this case 190 90 90% 190% higher than the Indian is democracy is not known to be principled uncorrupt or respectful of citizen freedoms. How does the argument about democracy attack the text confront this huge variation in development? South and west marching ahead almost like China and north and s east east lagging behind is the more relevant explanatory variable by any chance not democracy but democracy plus something. What might the plus be? Here is a hypothesis and we can develop this argument you know as we think further about it. the kind of ideology that captures politicians, political elite, locally elect electorally put in power or policy makers or both. Right? So this is a point about democracy can coexist with different kinds of ideology and and the idea or you could add something about the social structure and social reform in South. You could say something like that also. At least one state had serious uh uh land reforms. Kerala and others had serious social reform not land reform significant land reforms. Not in Andra, not Karnataka but but serious social reform with the exception of Karnataka. Karnataka did not have a serious social reform but Andra did as part of Madras’s presidency. Telangana after joining joining the after becoming part of Andhra Pradesh. Right. Um so I end there. It has been um truly enlightening, most educative um to read this book and I let me now tell you which book I think it’ll replace. Okay, fine. Let me say it although I didn’t want to say it earlier. This will replace Dres and Sen which was the latest great text that appeared. We agreed or disagreed but that is the greatest uh the latest text on on Indian development. This will replace it. So thank you for writing it. Thank you very much for having me and u um for for asking me to uh to discuss this book. As I as as my title suggests it’s not a review. It’s not even a discussion. It’s just my reading of of this magnum opus. So when James wrote to me uh I had an asmas which basically means uh kind of a big dilemma. And the dilemma uh and I and I don’t know if James is here. I took about two days to respond to him whether I’ll I’ll discuss this book or not. And the dilemma was the following. So this is Gilby art from left to right of Arj of Arjun Donachara and Eclavia. Um and and the Asmanas was the following that that you know both the authors are are are are salient and extremely important gurus of mine and and I put both Arjun and aklav there is because Arjun you know I I did not I did not I had the fortune of directly learning from them which is what Arjun did but uh you know a large part of my learning uh both in academic life but also as a you know in in in in life in general has also been shaped by the Eklavia um experience which is just by watching them um you know be academics, intellectuals, uh, seniors and so on. So, so it was a big asp I I I asked myself what is my dharma and so you know the Christian in my head said well my dharma is that you have to take them on. So even though you they are your gurus so so then I decided okay um so unlike Ashu I was shameless and I actually uh put on print what the book has achieved much to the maybe annoyance of others. Um but uh this is at least my reading that I think the two of the books that I really enjoyed reading as a student uh that really kind of helped me think about India and I and I would put this book in that category uh was the idea of India by Suril Kilani. It’s it still stands the test of time. It’s a remarkable book of course India after Gandhi by Ram Guha which is a phenomenal book and I do think for different reasons. So the way I would say is that this kind of for me as a student ideulated how to think about India even though I don’t agree with everything that Sunil says but just like as a conceptual and of course Ram gives a first exhaustive historical account so not just a conceptual philosophical but a historical account and I would put Kapoor and Subramanium in some in sort of a similar vein in a political economy narrative which is exhaustive uh detailed and also has a very uh very kind of original narrative arc. So, so um so let me give you you know sort of briefly the there’s lots going on in the book so I will not do justice to it. Um you know just two or three slides on on how to kind of conceptualize some of this uh Dva Arvind already said. So obviously we inherit a a very difficult uh you know uh conceptualization of the Indian nation state which is at partition a lot of bloodshed low capacity extreme diversity and they kind of in the first few chapters want us to think about the job at hand the gantoan task that neu and the congress party and the whole polity at that point in time bitkar have is can be thought of in this kind of very standard uh classification of state markets, society and and nation building. But how they make this slightly non-standard is by adding depth to each of these verticals which is really fascinating and engaging and you know you have to pick up the book to do justice to it. Uh one uh as Ashu already mentioned was kind of the centrality of order uh in the first few chapters of the book and why that plays a crucial role in the state being able to do anything else right to get things under control. Um um you know like I I come from Jammu and Kashmir even till today you know we have the older people talk about you know the time when the the the cabalis came right because it was complete uh you know bloodshed uh at that time on the issue of Kashmir and so on. Um, of course, markets play a central role. Uh, society, you know, how do you create social change uh and nation building and and in some sense uh Kapoor and Sur tried to argue that it was not only that that India was doing these four things but it was that it was trying to do these things four things almost simultaneously. Um this is as Ashu mentioned is really a central part of the book which is uh precocious sequencing uh both on the question of democracy uh what should be the dominant uh aspect of the economy manufacturing services agriculture welfare and rights. In all those four things there is this precautious uh precautious sequencing. Democracy comes before development you know it leads to various kinds of consequences. The book talks about this in detail. Services come before manufacturing. You know again the book talks about that in detail. Actually what I really liked which was very original in the book was that it goes at length actually talk about the multiple reasons and they all interact with each other very beautifully as to why India low lowkin manufacturing didn’t take off in India. So there are some of these reasons that may be kind of intuitive to you but what is remarkable is that they put them in the same place and they also make them talk to each other. So all the factors actually interact with each other. Low state capacity you know we can go on but but I thought that was a very original thing. um welfare before public goods. Ash already talked about it so I won’t delve too much into it. And of course this was uh you know both at that time but also more recently you know rights before state capacity. A very good example of this was even as recently as the right to education where we just didn’t have the capacity to implement something that looked very good on paper. It was broadly a disaster. Um and you know there was also this very interesting again the many there are many conceptual maps in the book but I’m just giving you a few uh was what what also said in the talk is that you know what you have thought about standard notions you may have thought about both state and market they kind of upend that upend that in the book um you know one we kind of intuitively know this but they really formalize it very beautifully is um is really the socialist state in India was was a state capitalist uh state even though it couldn’t really do infrastructure very well. It just kept trying to do uh various kinds of uh investment in public sectors. Uh and it’s only when the neoliberal states actually growth takes off are they able to do uh redistribution uh in any meaningful way. Um the book is both the book is both sort of micro is the winner in the sense that uh the book is both um bigger and smaller than the sum of its parts. So why do I say that? I mean even this is a mathematical impossibility um is because the book is most sure-footed when it stays kind of close to the ground. Um in that sense it’s actually much bigger than its parts. There’s so much texture in the book. There’s so much new data. Um but you know and I’ll come to the to the to the to the to the when is it sort of smaller than the hole is smaller is that you know you know in my and I’ll go to go into this in a few minutes. um in in the grand theorizing you know it’s it’s not as sure. So I I I’ll take that on. I I love to hear what Arvin and Dish want to say about it. So let me give you some three or four very tidbits which I thought was you know and I tried to keep them not and not be repetitive just to give you a flavor of how layered the micro is in the book. You know this this I thought was very interesting. the Christian paradox named after uh you know a very prominent senior IS officer um you know which is you know how labor laws kind of what damage they did to India right like so garments and there’s a lot of discussion of textiles in the garment industry in the book which I think is a very important example because it is the most uh labor intensive industry globally uh through various structural transformations in different countries and there were various labor laws protecting these government workers and the whole industry suffered and of course there were no such laws really in the IT sector and and that thrived um you know um the the transition from the richest the difference between the richest and the poorest state in India the per capita GDP has gone from 2x to 6x and what this has done is that you know you had a system a federal system that was designed for transfers for shared poverty and now it’s actually managing diversions at at at at a very large scale you know we have expanded education you know but actually literacy the ability of five years of schooling people with five years of schooling to have basic literacy has gone down from 86% to 40%. This is quite striking like if you think about it again there’s been mass expansion of access to education but this I thought was also a very telling number there’s a very nice discussion about about the complexity as a pathology there many examples one I really liked was the one on the URA plants so there all ura plants in India get certain kinds of subsidies but what is really interesting is that the larger the plant the larger is the subsidy and the larger is the inefficiency um and and you know there many other examples in the book um this also this stuff that we smoke intuitively but I think there’s a lot of original discussion around this in the book um you know you go to Delhi in December as as a lot of you do and you’ll find you know what is interesting you know you’ll all deal with pollution but what is interesting is that 44% of state pollution control boards have the 40 the state pollution patrol boards have 40 44% vacancy judiciary you know India has deep backlog of cases has a 39% vacancy at the state level and police force has a 22% vacancy right So you think of the state capacity and and it’s you know they call it incapacity by design. Um this also was very interesting is you know that that Ashu talked about it briefly is that you know there was too little violence in some sense. Obviously partition had a lot of violence but if you take the whole process of nation building and compare India to Europe uh there was actually too little violence which is quite remarkable but at the same time there is so much injustice which one figure that cried out loud to me was 75% of all prisoners in India actually under trial. So they’re hanging out, you know, they’re hanging in the jail even though the no verdict has been declared whether they’re guilty or not. Okay. Where the So the micro really is is quite remarkable. Um and as I said, it’s shore-footed on the ground, but the macro and I’ll point out a few places where I think it wobbles a little bit. You know, here, you know, here is a question, right? There’s precocious democracy. There’s precocious services. There’s precocious globalization. There’s precocious redistribution. There’s precocious wealth concentration. And there’s a slight risk of of the same hammer on all problems. Okay. So what do I mean by that? So one conceptual theoretical way of thinking about it um is is you know is it is is precociousness a cause? Is a culture? Is it choice? Is it a constraint? And the and and if I had time I I don’t I could go into each of these cases that I could you know one of the you know I wrote all these terms because each precautiousness could fit into one of these stories that I’ve written here. So one has to think carefully about what is being said when this term is being used uh in the book for for a variety of factors. Um counterfactuals are impossible to do when when the when the unit of analysis a nature is a nation state. So all we have are comparisons right? So but comparisons uh sometimes uh are sprinkled and sprinkled a little underdeveloped. So in the sense that of course the book is already too long. So I’m just think I’m just saying things that came to my mind and maybe I have a bias of of being a theorist as well. So here is one conceptual way of thinking about it right I’m not saying this is the right way but this is like a you know uh disharvind and I all three of us are big fans of Albert Hushman and so this is like a hushmanian 2x2 diagram. You know, one way of thinking about this is to say India is a highly centralized state but a very decentralized polity because China appears so many times in the book. That’s why I I put this here. China is a highly decentralized state but a very centralized polity. How much can we explain from this? I’m just giving you an example like what I would have done with all this rich data. A little more theorizing on comparisons because counterfactuals are almost impossible. Um so this is something that that that that just stickked out to me a little bit. um is that failures are very well theorized you know stat you know so chuck review this is the problem of exit the calm dino which the arr talked about precious sequencing in capacity by design that I showed you but there are also lots of successes um which the book acknowledges but again for my theoretical taste in comparison to the to the to the to the um to the failures there you know why does services succeed Now of course the book has anecdotes in it you know like higher education globalization and so on but like what’s the theorization for why is India able to do these things because if pathologies are self- enforcing then what explains the successes okay so and then I have a few questions which you know if we may have time I think and I thought really hard about this precocious thing because it really stuck with me and I kept thinking for a few days here is a here is a here is a proposition whether the precociousness which whether you think this is really the central story and whether this explains the India story. Let me offer a a case study. It will it can Sinatra Raan has an interesting new book in about Indra Gandhi where he calls this period from 67 to 85 the long 70s 84 right so here is a theory right whether we think precociousness was the constraint right democracy before development and so on I I think lives or stands by whether we think we are generous or critical of Indra Gandhi’s period time right why do I say that is because you know one view is that well Indra Gandhi was dealing so many things right she unlike Mr. Modi today even though she was a centralizing figure she didn’t even control her own party she didn’t control her chief ministers and so on right so one of the arguments that Sina tries to give is that well you know um she had all these constraints so she couldn’t really do governance in the way uh uh you know that would have kind of done development along with democracy so she had to really ensure the the the the backbone stood uh and then only in the late late only in the 80s which would go then go to the Rodri submanium argument when she had some control uh she was able to look towards pro business policies and so on but on the other hand if you look you look at this read this other fantastic book that if you haven’t read I highly recommend you read Den Shaoping also had many constraints right so is it is it is precociousness also a story of personalities and and not just kind of exogenous constraints okay so whether we are generous whether we what do I’m just giving you as a case study whether what we think of Indra Gandhi uh time in India could actually explain which way the precociousness story goes. Okay, here is another interesting thing because the book has talks about jobs and things that I that came to my mind when I was looking at the rich data. Do we understand cast skills and work well? Okay, so what do I mean by that? Uh DH has some excellent work in in the late 2000s on on the impact of economic growth on the reduction of salience of cast in Uttar Pradesh. It’s really amazing work. So you know we can you know we have to be careful how we say this and and you know reasonable people can have differing views about this. The cast the salience of cast as social hierarchy has definitely mitigated India over the last 30 40 years. However cast was not just a social stratification. It was also a way of transferring intergenerational skills. So as cast has gotten mitigated what has replaced it? So we keep talking about vocational training. The chief economic adviser this morning talked about vocational training is failing in India. It is a provocative idea that came to me only while I read the book is that while this has been a a significant moral achievement of India in the last 70 years has our inability to actually replace what was a traditional form of skilling in Indian society with something more modern and traditional actually been overlooked. Okay. Um this you know all of us have talked about at some point or the other but this also came to my mind because the book has such rich uh texture and data on on the civil services is that how should we think about the question of of the enduring control of elite civil services on almost every aspect of policym in India and here I I I did think that a comparison to China would be instructive is because China also inherited a very very strong uh tradition of civil services elite civil services but they turned out to be much more adapt adaptable and experimental than the Indian civil services. Again, reasonable people can have different views on this. Um again the democracy before development uh one way of thinking about this is that which also comes across to me when I was reading the book is that what is the what is the theory of Indian state? I have some theory of the Indian economy. I have some theory even of Indian society but what is the theory of Indian state? And is is is is this simple explanation enough that that because the Indian state is actually built for social mediation which it arguably has done very well it simply cannot do structural transformation in the way is this a causal argument that East Asian economies were able to do okay and this and I’ll take two more minutes um to me um is an important question um and I’ll try to be careful about saying it um is that I think that the this question that I’m trying to raise I’m going to try to raise on this slide has been very badly dealt with by the humanities and I think as social scientists we can do better and the argument is the following is that there is an inherent civilizational question beneath both state and society in India that makes us squeamish and that has largely to do with I don’t know if shiy is here like the kind of isomorphic mimicry that we have adopted of a western way of thinking uh about uh about history, history’s impact, religion, culture on society. Okay? And I’ll give you three uh examples or three ideas, right? So one which is very controversial but we we’ve been we we somehow almost never talk about it in academia. I don’t know why. uh I’m an economist so I can say it probably is that what is remarkable to a median Indian is uh and definitely a median um Hindu Indian is the idea that and and and and I and I checked a lot of the data before I came while while I was thinking about this is that there is only one large uh community civilization whatever you may want to call it that survives the spread of global Abrahamism. It’s very central actually to the median Indian like the identity of a lot of Indians. This informs a lot of their daily living right. So and this somehow doesn’t uh and I’ll come to this uh does not somehow enter academic discourse. I don’t know why and I’m happy to hear from other people why this does not enter academic discourse even though it enters political discourse and daily life very often in India. Second, which is a very central part of the book is that India achieves independence with minimal violence. Right? Why does it achieve independence with minimal violence? Arguably, arguably it’s because the independence movement itself was very nonviolent. The independence movement also was highly underscored by civilizational and spiritual thought aka through Gandhi. Right? So it’s not a coincidence I would argue at least these things are correlated that India achieves independence in comparison to Europe with not high levels of violence. Third, India stands out as uh a country you know we make all these charts about diversity and this and that right there is a certain kind of inherent pluralism historically in the Indian thought which may or may not contribute. But it may be the residual that that that even in political science that Ashu is talking about which we are very squeamish to talk about. Somehow this does not enter uh it does not enter the discourse in the book or or it does not enter discourses in uh in in in academic discussions that we have. And here is where I’m going to end and I and this is a little provocative and some you may or may not like this is that um here are three books which I which I really like and all three um uh uh you know are great bestsellers of their time. But here is an interesting thing right what is common in the introductions or prefaces of all the three books they ask us to be wary of Hindu majoritarianism right so and and and and you know I’ve written many critical things if you’ve read any of my little writings so I’m just trying to ask a scholarly question right like there is a certain kind of lexographicness uh in in in um um in in intellectual discourse that we have in the west and and somehow you know when I was a kid I used to go to Apuhar uh and you have to get you have to pay an entrance fees and then you get then you pay for feces for various various rides you know like there’s a certain kind of you know Daniela X’s book especially is very striking is because she actually talks about uh a secret geography right and then she argues that this is kind of what unites India and so on and yet you know she makes this long preface about you know no no Dom I’m not saying this you know I’m not a I’m not this person you know even though I’m writing about this topic and I want to sort of propose this as provocatively that is this the fixed cost that we have to pay uh for some to to to signal to virtue signal intellectual honesty uh in the western discourse when we’re writing about India but uh let me end here but as I said I think that this is the um three most uh important important books I have ever read on on on on the topic of political economy of India and if you haven’t bought the book you must write the book. Uh we have 10 minutes so I’m going to start by offering um asking Dh and Arvind if they would like to respond to anything that Rohit and Ashu said. Give you about one minute each. Sorry also on the nobody. So okay go you want me. Okay. So I think uh just first of all to thank you both uh quite a chore to read the book. So just doing that to thank you not uh and and the really wonderful comments you both made. I think Ashu the last slide I’ll just comment on that that same democracy but varying out outcomes across states. So we have this argument unfortunately it’s quite compressed that the north one reason economic transformation growth is anemic is it doesn’t establish order as well as the south and we know that past religious conflicts have been much much deeper in the north. Now the prior condition why that was the case was and again this was very short and should have been we just had to cut a lot is that social movements occurred in the south for social justice before universal franchise. That meant that we often think that social transformation justice is that is what the state does but actually it’s co-produced by society and the state. One part of that co-production which is the social movements part was much weaker in the north prior to independence. So that the burden of transformation all fell on the state which meant that the incentives to capture the state were even greater and that’s what leads to that’s why the thing is much more conflictual. I think Hana frankly is a completely NCR. You take out Korga, Hana’s thing drops to the average and it’s a very much of an offshoot. It’s a it’s a it’s more of a statistical quirk frankly of the NCR uh phenomenon rather than a hana you know one one gorga can lift hana one nida cannot lift up you need eight noas. Yeah. So so can I just build on that dish? Uh see uh uh uh uh Ashu the thing is that look uh one way to think about this is that until 1980 50 to 1980 there’s policy political and fiscal centralization right so one democracy means kind of uniformity and mediocre uniformity as it turned out if you look at the timing of the divergence between the north and the south. It begins in the 80s and takes off in the 90s and continues. So in a sense even though there’s one democracy after 1980 1990 states acquire agency right because of the decentralization of politics policy and fiscal then therefore you have then the initial condition argument that Dh said that you know in the south initial conditions were historically better but one striking fact about all the successes which comes about through agency is that they were the most globalized uh than the other states. So Tamil Nad does manufacturing like Gujarat and manufacturing exports. Tarnataka via Bangalore does services export. Hana does both manufacturing and services exports. UAM but also the the the Maruti plant and most quirky and interesting of all Kerala the most unique development model in the world does neither manufacturing nor services nor agriculture but via labor flows is most globalized in the rest of the world and that’s I think part of the explanation uh so I just want to add to say that is maybe the richest comments we’ve had from any discussions anywhere so apart from sid within uh uh in in Mumbai. So I will just respond to one thing that you said uh uh that you know you know we don’t explain change you know that’s kind of a one of the things you say in fact at the end of the book when you know uh we resist the temptation to say what should India do you know partly because of this thing is that when you look back at the you know the retrospective gaze it gives you the humility of saying that most of the chains the really big change that occurred in India was uh uh uh either you know crisis you know 66 91 etc or technology the uh the uh the cell phone revolution or I think something which you read the book you will get is that growth itself was one of the biggest agents of change so so uh so that’s our explanation for what brought about change you know in things and so looking forward there’s no prescription because you would don’t want to bring about crisis you don’t control technology and frankly we don’t have answers for what triggers growth as well so that’s the limited sense in which we tried to address that question um I have a long list of questions but interest of time I’m dropping my questions sadand uh right uh first of all congratulations Arvin and Dish for the magnumopus I do have it on my iPad I may finish reading it by that by time we get to this conference next Um and congrats to you know Ashu and and Roouhit for your fantastic comments. Um my question kind of piggybacks on something that both Ashu and Rohit um uh alluded to and this is that you know since 2014 India has had a government with a pretty dramatically different ideological character right Hindu nationalist government. Um in your analysis do you have a sense of to what degree the fact that India is led is head headed by in Hindu nationalist government does that make it more prone or less prone to continuing some of these things the sort of you the precociousness or some of the sort of habits that you see that have been formed by India in in is it or is it just the same and does the ideology of the government not really affect some of these development outcomes Uh I I couldn’t get a sense of that. I’m sure it’s there in the book. So I’m just curious to hear that. Thank you. Take a few and then um yeah, one comment and a question and and and the comment is on on why eastern states haven’t done as well as southern and since I come from Bihar the state uh and I’m actually writing um paper co-authoring a paper on Bihar. Uh I mean just just just one thought for your consideration. I think the initial conditions at the time of liberalization 1991 were not the same uh across and and you know just looking at the data you know I mean what what Bihar for example inherited uh the Zamandari system which completely messed up land reforms was very different from what south had and that carried on in messing up the agricultural sector. also post independence the freight equalization policy was completely messed up. So all these things mattered but the other thing that mattered and one of you mentioned is I think the leadership matters the chief minister what they do. So that that just just for your thought the question I have is I think at the end of uh what you concluded Arvind by the time you you you came to the end I was convinced that development should come before democracy. I mean uh why because everything that you said Disha’s study which I heard about which uh you know how how growth actually reduces social stratis stratification reduces poverty so I think we all can sit here and say democracy at all costs but I think we should ask the bottom 30% in China and India and say you know what would you have preferred in India and you Was it okay for you? So, so, so I think you do make a value judgment at the end of the paper even though it’s very nicely datadriven. And I just want to ask you, is that something that you value at all cost? The authors, you what? Sorry. Democracy value at all cost. Uh, final row at the back. Um, thanks. Thank you. Um the thing that I take away is that um you see a kind of a political payoff at the form of democracy and perhaps at the cost of development and whether one should have been before or the other is uh is of course a big question but India chose one way. So my question is um based on looking at the resilience of democracy across the country versus the uneven growth rates in the country. So you it seems as if democracy was flourishing whereas the economic growth has been fluctuating right. So now when you look um uh based on your um data and your own political uh theories, do you see democracy or growth being more resilient currently? If you had to think about what is going to be more resilient, is it democracy or is it going to be growth? So um one is post Modi actually many of the things we show were happening before that and especially say public goods provisions like toilets, water, Aadhaar all of these were happening before they were turbocharged. So we show in the curve the kink in the curve begins to change. So there’s more they put a lot more effort execution becomes better partly new technologies but also implementation becomes a bigger focus. So it isn’t a fundamental change of new things. It’s just that you know there is an acceleration of things that were there but it was a little which was much more lacical earlier and it became much more and Aadhaar is a classic thing right even GST you know if you think of two signature achievements of the Modi but the anti-cidence really go before that uh I think on eastern India I think we point out that the the land revenue model of the British and Objit I think Lakshmi have this great paper showing how much of a cost it had on eastern India because the British realized the mistakes much later on and southern and western India had different land revenues and that was a long-term cost. I think it has more explanatory power for Bihar but much less so for West Bengal. Remember Bengal was the most industrialized state. Bengal had a lot of the first IIT, first IM, first ISI, all these firsts were in Bengal and one of the things we say why did Bengal having is the state that has had the steepest decline. So that would apply but it’s not a universal and Orisa has actually done considerably better relative to where it was. I think this whole thing of development and democracy uh so I want to make our position unambiguously clear. We believe that the Indian nation state would have had much more difficulty in surviving as a cohesive entity without democracy. So development is m if there is no state every single big multithnic country look at the Soviet Union look at Yugoslavia look at Sudan look at the civil wars in Nigeria look what’s happening in Ethiopia look at Indones everywhere Sri Lanka look at all the constituents of British India from Myanmar to Sria everywhere there’s been disorder let alone Pakistan which breaks So that’s where you begin to see that there is an of course there are multiple instrumental values. Now you might have a view well maybe it’s better for India to break up and each of those ones will do great on development. I I don’t want to have a view on that you know you might have that. So we are very clear. We want to be very clear. Of course the democracy has costs and I think this idea that there are no costs to democracy. Start with electoral finance. It is massively expensive. You have to raise funds and it’s a big source of corruption. You cannot get around that fact. But that is the tradeoff. All political regimes will have their tradeoffs. This is the trade-off India made. And the trade-off was you created a multiethnic state which few others have managed. So, so on your question um just to you know kind of reinforce what Di said but in a more controversial arena we characterize the postl last phase after 2010 as welfareism and the interesting thing is that under UPA you know between 2009 14 you see the beginnings of welfareism which is Mandrega right to all the right to stuff and the right So, so that’s where welfareism begins and when Mr. Modi comes into power, welfareism continues but it changes form. So, in the case of public infrastructure and GST, it gets say turbocharged. But in the case of welfareism, it actually morphs but with the same spirit. So in the Modi era it begins as what we call the new welfareism that public provision of essentially private goods and services by leveraging technology and then of course culminating in cash transfers today but but the animating spirit is welfareism just the form has changed across these two regimes. Now on this development democracy just to add look let’s be clear about one thing we told you what the costs of democracy were and and the great achievements of democracy but let’s also be clear that some policy choices that set back our economic development were orthogonal to democracy right land reforms yes democracy but industrial licensing nothing to do with democracy import substitution nothing to do with democracy uh you know uh the fact that we emphasize services of manufacturing very little to do with democracy at least directly so so I think while you know what I agree with everything dish said that you know whatever the things but there’s also a sense in which some there were benefits there were costs but there also something orthogonal in our development that had nothing to do with democracy the last question very great question is democracy Y or growth neither can be taken for granted. both require hard work you know uh and on democracy we see uh it it’s a global phenomenon uh the democracy is not resilient so all countries think and in growth we see in India you know if if you look beyond the official numbers growth has not been resilient so everything requires hard work and right choices and correct agency so I’ll take one more round of questions uh start up here then Rani and then Um I’ll do Satik and then uh when you give your answers if you could also sort of you know give any sort of final comments that you would like to make and then I’ll go to Ashu and Rohit. Any final comments you’d like to make. So uh first of all thank you for a fascinating discussion. The book itself I glad to know it’s on an iPad. It’ be easier to read that way. Uh and uh so and the discussion so quick points is about to come. So without your eyes, you can order it now. You can order it or not. Right. I see. Right. Right. Good. Very good to know. No. So I’m from Bangladesh. So the point has been made that uh Bangladesh emerged from a very bloody war because Pakistan government would not accept the results of an election. Right. So that was one point Pakistan broke up. So it almost seemed to be a bit surprising that there’s the issue about this. I mean how would have India preserved been preserved without democracy with all these you know disparent you know divergent ethnic population so on. The second point is in the case of Bangladesh two months ago I wrote this quantified article both quantified and with policies that how Bangladesh’s development is mainly taking place under competitive democratic politics right so in the roughly 20 years of competitive democratic politics is most of which growth social development etc has taken place and explained reasons why and third point provocative point I is there a question no no no question is region development, the southern regional development. We did a report in the World Bank 2009 or so. We pointed out that the social movements of the southern states were an extremely important factor. A related factoid is that the share of the Brahman population in the south as far lower than the share of the Brahman population in the northern states. Exactly. Right. which is about 1 to 4% in the south about 15 to 20% in the north Brahman population which made it easier perhaps for the social movements to emerge in the southern states. Thank you. Slight modification there. You’re fundamentally right but the 15 to 20% estimate you have is for all upper casts not brains alone. Ramments would be 10% plus minus all uppercas including vashas and chhatrias and there are no vas and chhathatrias in south India right just thank you I I look forward to reading your book and it’s been a really interesting discussion my question to you is about delimitation and development and how the development odyssey is going to go moving forward. Um you had some interesting slides. We all know the divergence between the high growth low population southern states versus the lower growth high population northern states. Um if the government is able to push through um as they are trying to do increasing representation to over 800 seats there’s going to be much greater representation for the north. How do you think that’s not true? No. They have at at least as of yesterday they have said it’ll be proportional. So the increase is for women’s representation but we will see the final language tomorrow but as of now they are guaranteeing that every state will get exactly the same proportion as they had earlier. Okay. I didn’t know that. I I think there’s been some debate and worry. I think I I would see it’s not incontestably true what possible but we don’t So, so my question to you point is I don’t I don’t believe incontestably true though it might happen given the kinds of political pressures that have emerged. Okay. I don’t know what my question to you is how might this delimitation exercise and a potential uh greater voice for the lower uh growing north impact India’s development odyssey. Thank you. And then the final question um right up front here Satic. Thank you. Um this is a question for all of you just uh any of your takes on it. Um you know early on in uh I mean even up until very recent up until the last decade India had a planning commission that set up a lot of pol a lot of policy at the very high level uh targets everything and even if you look at the very early uh times of independent India ideologically there was a strong you know like left-leaning Marx uh at least marks informed uh elite uh but when you compare it to a lot of the other left-leaning countries uh that you know that were all at the time you know India’s statistics in education you know typically the things that left-leaning governments do well uh they struggled with even while they did have a planning commission that would set targets um and you know do you think that this was a uh the the gaps gotten by this was this a failure of accountability was there um you know even when these uh left-leaning politicians could also implement policies. They they did it in very curious ways such as focusing on elite universities versus, you know, mass education. You know, was there just ideological incoherence u that you know that really didn’t focus on material outcomes like I’m more on the soft side of things rather than systemic like in the you know democracy plus argument that uh professor talked about like what do what are your opinions there? Okay, I just have one response. Okay, so one is uh uh we have a whole chapter in the book. uh Arvin put together this amazing data on fiscal per federalism and what we show is how much fiscal federalism was a key instrument of nation building and essentially the transfer of resources from richer states to poor but that these transfers have increased over time and we talk about the limitation at the very end that you cannot have a situation where the south and the west by the The greater transfers are from the west not from the south. The south and hana and hana. The south protests the most but they are not the biggest source of fiscal transfers. You cannot have a situation where the south is expected both to give more money to the north as well as to give it more seats. I mean that is fundamentally going to break have varied enimical effects. Right now what it appears and as Ashu said it’s not written yet into law so until we see the law that the increase in the number of seats in the Lok Sabha is the one-third uh guaranteed representation for women but they will the proportional increase of for all states will be they will have the same as they had earlier. The big change would be delimitation within states. I think one of the big changes that could occur we are not focusing on is that urban India will have finally much more say than rural India. Urban India is severely under represented. That’s why urban India is treated like crap. All subsidies everything goes to rural India. And I think we are underestimating. We are all focused on interstate. M we are not seeing what it could do from within states. Uh and and just one last thing. So uh see the book has uh as we’ve done these things people depending on their uh interest will say well the book doesn’t have much on civil society. It doesn’t have much on the environment on civilization. It doesn’t have on the private sector. All of which is true. We had two contracts. First with Harvard University Press which said it’s too long, too many pages. You have to cut. We said no. We’d rather not go with you. Then we went to Princeton US Press. They said no. Too long. You have to cut. We said no. Despite that, we left about 100,000 words on the cut, which had a lot of by the way on civilization because it’s already about 800 pages. So yes, you would have accepted the explanation. So yes, there are limitations undoubtedly. Uh but there were some pretty prosaic reasons why these limitations are there. So so on on last on I think the bigger issue is federalism and the future of federalism delimitation etc are symptoms not the cause and the deeper causes are twofold. Every federal system no matter where will always struggle if performance diverges across the entities. That’s the thing you know the big part of the problem in India the grievance of the southern states is that look not just are we giving more and more transfers as dish said and it’s rising over time but we are giving it in the context of underperformance by the Hindi heartland and overperformance so it’s creating perverse incentives so it’s like we are rewarding and that’s the language as well you’re rewarding you’re penalizing our better fertiliz fertility performance you’re penalizing our GDP performance and and this is what so so the first deeper problem is divergent performance fertility and growth and really if this continues it some the manifestations will be different but the problems will endure the second thing I think we have to be honest about this is that fundamentally uh there’s a breakdown of trust between this current government and other entities right And it’s not just about the content but the manner in which everything is done. The unilateralism, the lack of discussion, the lack of process, the lack of inclusion. A and that’s why we say in the book that you know if you don’t maintain this cooperative federalism between the center and the states building on this trust that trust is a precondition all these are going to emerge and reemerge. In fact, today I saw a very nice phrase used by Yamaya. This these attributes of not adhering to this is turning us from cooperative to uncooperative federalism. A and if you have that all these problems are going to persist. Um Ashu or Rohit would you like to add something? Yeah, I mean this is a counterfactual question but I think it’s worth thinking about. Counterfactual is very important. We can’t prove in any Um and what I’ll say what it is and then I’ll say why I think it’s an important thing to think about. Um could India have changed its economic strategy policy instead of 1991 as early as 1965 through that crisis 65 to 67 right 67 is huge devaluation everything but India does not and now you can there’s a simple answer you can say well nobody believed in market processes and market as the market market leveraging markets for for poverty alleviation or no one believed in that you could say that would be I think an easy answer because I in my agriculture book I document that Neu last speech last few speeches on agricultural failure in parliament India was doing very badly agriculture was doing extremely badly and so Neu is saying perhaps our land reforms based strategy was wrong. I cite that speech this twice he made that speech the same perhaps we didn’t understand India’s countryside and the agrarian problem perhaps it’s some other so at that point for fort foundation had already proposed technology as a way to go but they’re not price incentives at that time very strongly they did say price incentives the farmer should be considered so he is nu did embrace technology as you know but price incentives was not willing to embrace farmers as a way to give incentives to farmers to increase production right India was seriously in trouble for on on on food. So he does say all that right and then as he’s dying uh a an agriculture prices commission is brought into being and a a policy a new policy is announced which not only embraces new technology which are arrived in the form of green revolution technology and dwarf seeds right not only that but also price incentives to farmers so India’s agriculture now that the the the India’s agriculture went through a serious reform form in the mid 1960s and that happened formally under Lal Bahadu Shastri Elka heading the agriculture Alka heading the whatever whatever bureaucratic team that he led and C sub Braum as the agriculture minister of India right but it did not extend to industry right and I am just I for all of us to you know I think if neu was neu the die hard socialist also he gave up collectivization in 1957 confronted by Chihi Charan Singh he was serious about collectivization and he was arguing that’s not only the Chinese and the soviets who did that it’s also Israeli kubuts and even though India did not have a formal relationship with Israel at that time esopal documents the case the greatest biographer of Neu documents the case that Neu personally sent the agriculture secretary to Israel to study kibbutz and come back and report on how collectivization is working right and then find it’s in in in this great debate in I think it’s nagpur in 1956 he loses the the the collectivization idea to chrian singh he loses the that plot to loses the the argument to chi Singh and then chi charan singh basically said if you remove the peasantry if you remove private property in land you will not have great welfare coming to the countryside. It will be the opposite. We’ll need to wrap up soon. So yeah, I I I took longer than one minute, but I I thought there’s money. Dr. Lamba, you get the final word. Um just uh maybe I can just unpack a little bit very quickly what what what what Arvin said about um you know the second tension, right, which was the the if you don’t converge, you’re going to you know, no matter what else you do. And I think so what let’s do a very quick cross-country comparison right so what typically happens is which is called convergence and I actually learned this from Arvin when we did the economic survey is that there two forces right one is diffusion the other is migration so if you look at China I mean China is a bit difficult because they just tell 2 million people to move to one place but usually what happens is that if a if if one region of a country or a state or whatever unit of analysis is growing rapidly the ideas of why it is growing rapidly start diffusing to other parts of the country or region of analysis and the second is if that’s not happening fast enough people move there okay so these are two forces now if you look at this theoretical prism and put it on India right neither is happening at a brisk enough pace um and and the second one is even more instructive because in our minds you know Indians you know do move around a lot which is true and we we did this in the survey with Arvin using railway data but you know one is there’s a very peculiar thing about Indian migration is that unlike you know when people move from Nevada to California they move in India they never move I’m being I’m exaggerating a little bit so a person moves from uh you know a small district in UP to either Lucknau or Bombay but very small fraction of them actually move lockstock and barrel and there are various reasons to it and we can go into detail you know if you want later on but but this is this is the sense in which even though you know south and west are growing very rapidly both the the why they’re growing rapidly you know the call centers and the BPOS’s initially and now the global capability centers are just not moving uh to to to to the interland enough and actually because of our failure of urbanization policy people are actually not moving more and more to the south and the south and the west and on both metrics actually this is leading to a huge divergence in per capita incomes in uh in at both uh both state level and district level in India which is very worrisome so can I have the last What? Just on behalf on behalf of DH 30 seconds. No, no. As fellow Dona Chararas, we not only forgive the insolence of our disciples, but we rejoice in the quality of his insolence. Um I would like to ask all of we should thank the two authors for writing an excellent book and the two discussions um and the audience for sitting till so late. Thank you very much.