prasad1
Active member
Sadly it is not so. Just as Mangalyaan (Mars-craft in Hindi) was entering the Mars orbit, three judges in India’s supreme court cancelled, with effect from March next year, 214 of the 218 coal mining licences that have been issued without open tendering between 1993 and 2011. This endangers India’s power generation industry, its steelworks and other industries, as well as adding to foreign investors serious worries about the risks and uncertainty of doing business here.
All these events link up to illustrate why India’s fudge and fix-it approach to policy making and governance, known as jugaad, coupled with a belief that everything will work out OK (chalta hai), have whittled away at the country’s institutions and economic performance to such an extent that Modi won a landslide general election victory four months ago because voters believed he could restore India to its rightful place in the world.
Even though it fails in many industrial areas, India is a world leader in space and rocket technology, manufacturing, and delivery, mainly because the US and other countries stopped it being able to import high technology after its nuclear weapon tests in 1974 and 1998. This meant that India was on its own. So, capitalising on work initiated shortly after independence in 1947 by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, scientists and private sector companies produced a series of successes that culminated in yesterday’s Mars achievement.
The development speed and low cost of the Mars probe illustrates how Indian industry is capable of developing the negative skills of jugaad into frugal engineering where the best is made of limited resources at minimal cost.
Contrast that with India’s defense industry, where there has been no ban on imports and where US and other foreign companies have connived with the defence establishment to such an extent that as much as 70 percent of India’s defense orders have to be bought from abroad – even night vision goggles, radars and guns, as well as helicopters, other aircraft, ships and missiles, have not generally been manufactured in India to satisfactory standards.
This bureaucratic throttle-hold on the growth of manufacturing industry stretches far beyond the defence industries, and Modi’s hopes of reviving manufacturing industry will not succeed unless he stops bureaucrats working with foreign suppliers to boost imports at the cost of local companies.
Governments till now have failed to tackle these and many other failing in the way India works, which has led to an escalation of “judicial activism” that began over 30 years ago, where courts take it on themselves to order governments and other authorities what to do. Initiatives have ranged from protecting bonded labor and enforcing environmental regulations to ordering Delhi’s buses to be powered by compressed natural gas, and even recently challenging the government’s tardiness in appointing an official leader of the opposition in parliament.
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The judges no doubt felt they were doing their legal duty, and it is of course the failings of successive governments that have led the supreme court to intervene to such a degree. And it will no doubt continue to do so until the government gets a grip on affairs that it should be running.
India?s Modi: The Man Who Fell to Earth
I know right now Modiji can do no wrong, and majority of Indians literally worship Modiji, but sometimes what shines is not gold, it can be fools gold.
All these events link up to illustrate why India’s fudge and fix-it approach to policy making and governance, known as jugaad, coupled with a belief that everything will work out OK (chalta hai), have whittled away at the country’s institutions and economic performance to such an extent that Modi won a landslide general election victory four months ago because voters believed he could restore India to its rightful place in the world.
Even though it fails in many industrial areas, India is a world leader in space and rocket technology, manufacturing, and delivery, mainly because the US and other countries stopped it being able to import high technology after its nuclear weapon tests in 1974 and 1998. This meant that India was on its own. So, capitalising on work initiated shortly after independence in 1947 by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, scientists and private sector companies produced a series of successes that culminated in yesterday’s Mars achievement.
The development speed and low cost of the Mars probe illustrates how Indian industry is capable of developing the negative skills of jugaad into frugal engineering where the best is made of limited resources at minimal cost.
Contrast that with India’s defense industry, where there has been no ban on imports and where US and other foreign companies have connived with the defence establishment to such an extent that as much as 70 percent of India’s defense orders have to be bought from abroad – even night vision goggles, radars and guns, as well as helicopters, other aircraft, ships and missiles, have not generally been manufactured in India to satisfactory standards.
This bureaucratic throttle-hold on the growth of manufacturing industry stretches far beyond the defence industries, and Modi’s hopes of reviving manufacturing industry will not succeed unless he stops bureaucrats working with foreign suppliers to boost imports at the cost of local companies.
Governments till now have failed to tackle these and many other failing in the way India works, which has led to an escalation of “judicial activism” that began over 30 years ago, where courts take it on themselves to order governments and other authorities what to do. Initiatives have ranged from protecting bonded labor and enforcing environmental regulations to ordering Delhi’s buses to be powered by compressed natural gas, and even recently challenging the government’s tardiness in appointing an official leader of the opposition in parliament.
.....................................
The judges no doubt felt they were doing their legal duty, and it is of course the failings of successive governments that have led the supreme court to intervene to such a degree. And it will no doubt continue to do so until the government gets a grip on affairs that it should be running.
India?s Modi: The Man Who Fell to Earth
I know right now Modiji can do no wrong, and majority of Indians literally worship Modiji, but sometimes what shines is not gold, it can be fools gold.
