Making self-reliance work for India

For self-reliance to be effective, the country must reduce protection and invest in exports and learning

Sociologist Ronald Dore was a great scholar of Japan.  During a visit to Delhi in the early 1980s, he wrote a paper on self-reliance in India, sub-titled “Sturdy ideal or self-serving rhetoric”.  It provides us with both the direction of what we must do to make self-reliance work (the sturdy ideal), and a clear warning of what to stay away from (the self-serving rhetoric).  Dore’s essential argument was that India needed to learn from the best in the world, that this learning required a systematic and considerable effort, and that in matters of self-reliance, learning mattered more than creating.
 

Dore