India unshackled?

Editorial in The Economist's latest edition laments, "Despite its huge potential market of 1.1 billion people, despite its wealth of English-speakers and democratic institutions, despite its vaunted 15-year-old reforms, India has been a daunting place to do business, its entrepreneurs chained down by the world's most bureaucratic bureaucracy, lousy infrastructure and lousier Fabian economic ideas." Even after 15 years of following liberal economic policies & five decades of independence, more than half our population is poor by any standards and does not have access to proper housing, sanitation, electricity, drinking water, medical facilties et al. "It takes eight days, including 32 hours waiting at checkpoints and toll booths, for a lorry to crawl from Kolkata to Mumbai."

India presents a queer contrast between the 'privileged' & 'underprivileged' at all levels and every govt. at the centre is pursuing the wrong policies [i.e., subsidies, quotas etc. of various hues] to bring in socio-economic equity. I sometimes wonder as to why our political leaders can't sense things that are so obvious and keep raking up non-issues when the entire nation's energies ought to be focussed in realizing its true potential. The government must work towards providing basic standard of living for all its citizens not for the sake of getting a permanent seat in the Security Council nor to be labelled as developed nation but because this is what each & every Indian deserves and that is the primary reason a politician is elected for. Indians have put up with apathy of the political class for long; now is the time to assert the collective angst against the usurpers and the unscrupulous. The Ed concludes, "India has taken off. Just think how high its people could fly without all those chains."