India's economic challenges

Martin Wolf has an excellent op-ed in FT, which highlights how India and China have decoupled from the developed economies during the Great Recession.



He makes the point that, even with possible future global shocks, the biggest challenges to India's growth remain internal.

Thoughtful Indian observers are well aware that the principal obstacles to rapid economic development are internal, not external. Among obvious constraints are failures of governance, including wasteful spending on subsidies at all levels of government, a dire record on the provision of education and health to the bulk of the population, rigid labour laws, inadequate infrastructure and costly restrictions on efficient use of land.

He advocates a cautious opening up of the financial markets,

First, the financial system is capable of generating huge instability and needs to be watched. Second, the integration of India into the global financial system has to be managed carefully. Huge crises may be socially and economically manageable for high-income countries. They would be grossly irresponsible for a country like India.