Comments by "Persona" (@ArawnOfAnnwn) on "Bolivia Vs India: The Two Economic Formulas for Escaping Misery" video.

India did NOT develop purely because we opened up in 1991. A lot of the base for that development was set up in the early years of independence i.e. in the 1950s and 60s. Without it the country would've been cleaned out had it simply opened up the to the world economy immediately. Maybe India should've opened up in the second half of the 70s or 80s, but opening up immediately upon independence would've been a disaster. You need state investment to set up infrastructure, both physical and social (health, education, etc.), as well as heavy industry and a financial base. Only after a strong domestic base is established can a country have the strength to take on the world.
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This video is also very light on details, which matter. For instance, one common element between both India AND China is that neither country liberalized capital flows fully i.e. the freedom to move money both into AND OUT of the country. The latter is very constrained in both cases, for good reason. Other countries that have done that, due to heavy insistence on it by the IMF, have seen massive wealth extraction abroad as a result. So we put in place limits to ensure that when foreigners invest into India, they stay committed as opposed to just opportunistically jumping in and then pulling out with their winnings at the drop of a hat. It also allows govts. the freedom to take policy decisions with the interests of the country in mind rather than being beholden to capital investors.
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A lot of the base for our development was set up in the early years of independence i.e. in the 1950s and 60s. Without it the country would've been cleaned out had it simply opened up the to the world economy immediately. Maybe India should've opened up in the second half of the 70s or 80s, but opening up immediately upon independence would've been a disaster. You need state investment to set up infrastructure, both physical and social (health, education, etc.), as well as heavy industry and a financial base. Only after a strong domestic base is established can a country have the strength to take on the world.
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@gorilladisco9108 Bhai it was the Congress that opened up the country, and they were still dominant in Indian politics then.
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@jarjarbinks3193 I'm not talking about the license raj domestically, but about openness to global markets which is what video also focuses on. My point wasn't that suppressing all private sector is good, but that a base (both public AND private) of domestic capability should be established before the world gets to stick its fingers in. This is what was done in other tiger economies, like S. Korea. Even the US and Britain, the supposed champions of neoliberal economics, did it in the past. Read Ha Joon Chang's Kicking Away The Ladder for more on all this. It's known as the infant industry argument.
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South Korea achieved a lot of its development under a higher state-managed process, whose legacy remains to this day.
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"when there is really no good reason to do so" - that is very debatable...
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