Will persistent problems – poor education, infrastructure, corruption – derail Indias headlong charge?
This is a daunting proposition. India’s current GDP annual growth rate is 6.6%. The ADB report lists the obstacles that India must overcome if it is to achieve double-digit growth: infrastructure bottlenecks, abject rural poverty, poor education and healthcare systems, significant government failures, an outdated bureaucracy and poor governance. The outmoded practices and mindsets inherited from the British Raj – described by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru as ‘just carrying on after the manner of the aged – quiescent, devitalised, uncreative, desiring peace and sleep above all else’ – must be replaced by the new can-do spirit of India’s nascent middle class. ‘The BRIC targets are valid and still possible – I am confident of that, and the reason is not economic, it is human and social,’ says Gopalakrishnan, a director of Tata Sons. This firm is one of two private parent companies (the other is Tata Industries) that hold controlling stakes in dozens of public companies, fr
