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Showing posts from December, 2011

Collapse of Modi’s third path

There was a time when Gujarat government would take pride in initiating ways to get out of economic activity. I distinctly remember how former state finance secretary KV Bhanujan, at the turn of the last century, would prolifically tell me how it was important for the state to shrink its role in running the economy and why it should concentrate increasingly on social sector, which had long been forgotten, becoming the chief reason for the state’s poor human development index (HDI). Word would ring very strong in the corridors of power that it wasn’t the role of the state to run enterprises, and they should be either disinvested or sold to the private sector. To prove, officials would quote Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, and say market economy, strong social sector and strong democracy were complimentary, not contradictory. Though the idea of getting out of economic activity wasn’t new for Gujarat, soon after assuming power, in October 2001, chief minister Narendra Modi announced it would