Ahmedabad, 25 July 2013

Noted economist Jagdish Bhagwati today spoke briefly to Times Now news channel. We have tried to quickly note down his impressive conversation to Times Now and produce a copy here which is worth reading:

“Growth is ‘pull up’ strategy and not ‘trickle down’. Trickle down is passive strategy and that is conservative idea of Mrs. Thatcher and Regan. I was in the Indian Planning Commission in early 1960s and we thought of growth as an active pull up strategy which would pull people up into above the poverty line, into gainful employment. And so it is not conservative strategy, it is a radical strategy. How we bring rapid growth with great opportunities to poor is what we are arguing about, and that’s where Mr. Sen has nothing to offer except just attitudes and platitudes.”

“So in my judgement the first thing to recognize is that the Gujarat model is about rapid growth and that’s where Mr. Modi has played a role, he would clear everything in order to attract investment in a week or so, and therefore lot of people people are flocking to invest there. There’s no black out, he has brought electricity, and he is also an environmentalist.”

“When I met him recently and when I gave lecture on Gujarat – what we can teach Gujarat and what we can learn from it, I found that there was lot we can learn from him and little we can teach him. I was deeply impressed by him. And he gave me a book on environment and I was quite astonished, as it was written by him.”

“I personally feel that he represents a good force for change which actually provides competition to UPA govt. And I think more competition we have in politics, it’s better.”

“With Gandhis and the Nehrus ruled for so long , the ability of the system to throw up young people who would compete with what we call a dynasty has been severely undermined, and therefore new ideas don’t come up through the normal force of competition.”

“I’ am not a BJP person, but the BJP at least brings in more competition. Modi’s leadership has not happened automatically because he is born in the right family. He has to fight for it and that is a very good sign. In fact I would like to see in India much more political competition.”

“Rather than go by the attitude ‘I will never vote for Narendra Modi’ we should promote competition, and actually when parties manage to set up their candidate, I would love to see public debates in India also. We should have informed debates, rather than people(politicians) hiding and just saying, vote for me because I belong to right party.”