As this Budget approaches, there are many worries about the future of ‘the India economic story’. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been severely criticised as a gargantuan guzzler of taxpayers’ money, a scheme that seeks to condescendingly trap India’s agricultural poor in an 18th century mode of production. The stock markets are crashing regularly and there are fears that as the American economy heads into recession, Indian market sentiment and exports will be badly hit. Already growth rates are lower than expected: the Indian economy is now expected to grow at a slower pace of 8.7 per cent rather than the projected 9 per cent. Economists warn of an impending crisis: the coming steep rise in the price of all food, which will affect the poor most of all.
The idiocy of urban thinking
by Sagarika Ghose, Hindustan Times, 15 February, 2008