Steve Hanke: ‘Modi Is Pushing India Into A Backwater’ – OpEd
By Peter Tase
On January 16, 2020, P. Rajendran, published an interview in www.rediff.com with Prof. Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University, one of the world’s greatest economists. According to Professor Hanke; “Narendra Damodardas Modi is making all the wrong moves by stoking sectarian feuds and polarizing the Indian population. My main concern is that once you get into ethnicity and religion, and drag those two topics into a political agenda, you are asking for trouble.”
Furthermore, the Johns Hopkins Professor underlines: “Modi wants to play more and more ethnicity and religious cards. It is a miscalculation in the immediate run. It creates a lot of investment problems. Outsiders looking at India may not know about contemporary history. They see problems with the police and in civil society, and raids on university campuses. Furthermore, civil strife distracts politicians from doing what they should be doing.”
For Professor Hanke: “the primary thing is the economy. While India has a potential growth rate of eight percent, this year it will have trouble getting even to five percent.”
Considering the current ethnic turmoil in India’s border territories with Pakistan; Professor Hanke is against all actions that will disrupt a country’s business environment, and as a result, diminish its potential in the global economy and towards championing a thriving capitalist system.
As a former senior economist to President Ronald W. Reagan (1981-1982), with a focus in privatization and as chief economic adviser to President Suharto of Indonesia (1998), Professor Hanke emphasizes that “there is nothing without stability, for the Indian prime minister there is a negative confidence beyond his base. In local elections, he and his party are not doing well. Unfortunately, Modi is pushing India into a backwater.”
To read the full interview please click here.
