Word: chidambaram
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...free-market China continues to set the economic pace with GDP growth exceeding 9%?a fact that seemed to dampen enthusiasm in New Delhi in the face of otherwise encouraging circumstances. In Asia, "China is clearly the leader of the flock," conceded India's Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. "India is still just part of the flock." That chronic inferiority complex is rooted in industrial policy envy. China maintains a big advantage over India in sectors such as manufacturing, said Chidambaram, because its central government dictates "with brutal efficiency" such initiatives as the construction of commerce-greasing infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, India...
...industry built around a comparative evaluation of India and China." This exercise is bound to give the former an inferiority complex. India underperforms China on just about every economic indicator. Its economy is smaller, and its growth rates, while impressive, are lower than China's. When Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram made his budget speech to India's Parliament in February, he noted that the mainland's Finance Minister, during a recent G-7 meeting, "looked in my direction and told the gathering that China had received $500 billion worth of foreign investment since China opened its economy...
...overhauling the economy. Many in Bangalore now worry that there is a new economic crisis looming: China. This fear may well prove to be baseless and in time, China could become a vast new market for Indian software companies. For now, though, Indian businessmen like Premji and politicians like Chidambaram are tactically using the Chinese threat to turn up the heat on those who are blocking reform. In a country where politicians and bureaucrats still use shibboleths accumulated over a half-century of socialism to obstruct progress, the word China works like a charm. After all, which self-respecting Indian...
...Even before it lifts a single Indian out of poverty, Chidambaram's budget has already achieved something important: it had none of the socialist rhetoric of the past. Chidambaram has increased spending on the poor without punishing the middle class and rich, and has hence shown that fighting poverty and keeping India's economy booming need not be contradictory goals. Indeed, the Bombay stock market shot up 2.2% on the day of his speech...
...shared, many remain pessimistic that the poor will benefit from the measures. "We have no reason to believe that the current bureaucratic system can deliver," says P. Chengala Reddy, of the Indian Farmers and Industry Alliance, a farmers' lobby, citing the wastage and corruption that have blighted previous initiatives. Chidambaram's paradox is this: to reach India's poor, he has to rely on a bureaucracy whose inefficiency helped perpetuate the problem of poverty in the first place. The Finance Minister is aware of the challenge. "We have provided the money, and I accept that it is our responsibility also...