KOCHI: The year 2016 could go down in history as the year in which several developed nations started withdrawing themselves from globalisation, as exemplified by Brexit. And the phenomenon will have an impact on the Indian growth story, Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Advisor to the Union government, said here on Monday.
He was delivering the 15th K.P. Hormis Memorial Lecture organised by the Federal Bank K.P. Hormis Memorial Foundation in honour of the bank’s founder. Mr. Subramanian spoke on ‘Surprises of Indian Economy’.
According to him, one of the surprises has been the Indian model of democratic and material development. “While the West took a long time to develop its democratic institutions and achieve economic progress, eastern countries like Japan, China, and Korea have taken shorter time to achieve material prosperity. However, some of them are still not democratic. India has developed political institutions even before achieving the level of material prosperity in the other two categories of countries,” he said.
Another surprise is the large-scale migration of people. Around eight to nine million people migrate within India annually, and that bodes well for the economy as workers will be available where they are needed, Mr. Subramanian said. “It was thought earlier that only four to five million people migrated annually. This stands out because southern States like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal have an ageing population in contrast to the younger population in northern States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,” he added.
The economist said India was a more open economy than China. “A study of the developmental programmes has shown that the targeted population stood to benefit. At the same time, a greater part of the country has lagged in the provision of health care and education. Political parties do not canvass votes promising better education and health care,” Mr. Subramanian observed.
