Dr. Subramanian Swamy’s article (Dec. 2) enunciates a course of economic development for the new government in 2014. He is right in making a case for our backward agricultural sector which demands urgent attention and action. It is commendable how he has dispelled the impression that India’s demography is a liability.
The final part offers an idealistic discourse on shaping our vast and young population, laying stress on specific kinds of “intelligence” to create a “superior species of human being.” But India needs to have good infrastructure and more investment in its education system to turn its young population into a valuable resource.
Salini Johnson,
New Delhi
India’s demographic dividend is a natural resource available in abundance. The need is to tap it properly. The growth targets he has projected by achieving an investment rate of 36 per cent of GDP and a lower capital output ratio can surely make India join the ranks of double-digit growth rate countries. Along with it, greater emphasis is required in the field of human capital.
Anmol Waraich,
New Delhi
To my mind, the success of Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Korea and Japan can be attributed to the superior cognitive, moral, social and emotional intelligence of their people.
Dr. Swamy has therefore come to the obvious and correct conclusion that the vast number of young Indians, who are a unique asset to India, should be educated to develop these characteristics. However, I doubt whether it is possible at all to develop the moral, social and emotional intelligence of a vast number of people under the present Indian environment. Our experience of a democratic system with a liberalised market economy in the past 20 years — with deepening corruption, crony capitalism, criminalised and unethical politics and divisive social conflicts — can perhaps lead us to this conclusion ... that with the level of moral, social and emotional intelligence of our people, we may be better governed by a dictatorship without any religious, linguistic and social bias, at least for 10 years.
J.F. Dawson,
Chennai
