Rahul Bajaj blames socialist policies for India lagging behind

Country wasted resources on public sector and stymied private sector, says Rahul Bajaj

The "socialist pattern of industrialisation" resulted in India remaining backward compared to countries like China and Singapore, renowned industrialist Rahul Bajaj said here on Friday.

"Forget the West. But other nations, whether Singapore or South Korea or even China, who were at our levels in the early 70s, went so far ahead of us in the last 40 years.

"It is because of our mistake in pursuing a misdirected and badly implemented socialist pattern of industrialisation especially between 1970-90," he said.

Bajaj was speaking at the Graduation Day 2017 of Indian School of Business (ISB) here.

The country wasted resources on the public sector and stymied the private sector, he said.

"From the early 1970s, the quality of our governance declined and the governments became increasingly corrupt and ineffective in providing even basic services to the people," he said.

Ineffective and corrupt governance created widespread tax evasion and an anti-people political and administrative structure, Bajaj said.

"The collapse of the public education and health systems at all levels has hurt us deeply," he said.

Public sector banks were repeatedly looted by politicians and businessmen in collusion with bank officials to create bad loans, the cost of which is ultimately borne by the honest tax payer, Bajaj said.

The liberalisation of economy since 1991 changed the things, removing some fundamental constraints on businesses, he said.

The people now vote on bread-and-butter issues rather than narrow considerations which was seen in the results of elections in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere, he said.

The businessmen should "set high standards of governance we expect from government", Bajaj added.