'India lacks reform flowing from political conviction'

Rife with contradictions and rich in potential, India is very much a "work in progress" as it looks to rise to a position of global reckoning, according to senior journalist T N Ninan.
But there are several challenges to achieving that transition, he believes, not least of which is the scenario wherein the country does not have reform "flowing from political conviction, such as when a political leader campaigns and creates a climate for change".
Momentum and acceleration are key considerations for Ninan, the chairman and editorial director of the daily, Business Standard, in his exposition of the "Turn of the Tortoise" (Penguin Allen Lane, 2015), or the historical imperative for an emerging India as it aspires to find its rightful standing amongst nations as a demographic behemoth and the world's largest democracy.

In focusing on the future, Ninan talks about a "coming out party", the sort of which South Korea threw in 1988 and China in 2008 by hosting the Olympic Games. The author believes it to be "a fair bet that... If the economy fares well over the next few years, whichever government is in office in 2019 will feel compelled to bid for the Olympic Games of 2028".
But even as he fancies such an eventuality for India, the author rues, sarcastically, that "there is no danger of anyone trying to give effect to much of the change agenda" that he spells out as he dwells on the "challenge and promise of India's future".

However, not one to lose heart, he believes that India "merely has to be itself and deliver steady, incremental change" for achieving "transformative results". If he appears to despair of a thrust from the political class to lift the country into the regions of stratospheric growth, he also believes that India has "both economic weight and creditable speed" for generating the progress that it needs.

The approach to take for turning the "situation to an advantage", he says, would be to recognise that "state capacity is limited" and that it "ought to focus better on what it alone can or should do".

In this respect, talking about the "mega trends" for the future, the author notes that one of them will be the "unwilling retreat of the state" under a "growing private sector dominance of economic activity".
In this context, Ninan calls for a broad policy switch" from 'make' to 'buy'. However, he also points out that it is "important" to recognise that such a trend as that of the public sector taking a backseat is "out of line with the political mood".