Sunday, 25 January 2015

Economic Humbug


 Some people say  that the Indian economy is growing, as shown by the fact that the stock market is booming, the IMF has projected that the Indian economy is poised to become the world's fastest growing economy in 2 years, an economist from MIT and another from Harvard Business School have predicted that India would overtake China, etc.

All this is humbug.

Firstly, I am not at all impressed by economists, whether they come from MIT, Harvard Business School or the London School of Economics. A lot of nonsense is taught in these institutions, instead of treating Economics as a science, and a lot of people from these institutions are arrogant fools instead of genuine scholars. What is important is what one has in his head, instead of displaying degrees from Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, etc. I am least impressed by such degrees in Economics, which is a science which has been perverted by hirelings of the establishment posing to be scholars.
Secondly, I have repeatedly said that the basic problem of the Indian economy is not how to increase production but how to raise the purchasing power of the masses.

  We can increase production of any commodity any number of times because we have thousands of bright engineers, technicians, managers scientists etc, and we have immense natural resources. The problem, however, is that 75% of our people are so poor that they have no purchasing power. And even the 15-20% Indian middle class is having its purchasing power rapidly eroded by skyrocketing prices of foodstuffs, etc Foreign markets are saturated with Chinese consumer goods, and the Chinese have even penetrated a section of our markets. So how will the goods produced by this ' growing ' economy be sold ?

Thirdly, it is not enough that there is economic growth. The further question to ask is : who is getting the fruits of this growth ? Is it only a handful of big businessmen, or the Indian masses ?