Story link: http://www.goodnewsindia.com/index.php/Supplement/article/arun-jaitleys-insider-view
Arun Jaitley became a successful lawyer when still very young and is still among the highest income-tax payers in the country. He is today a rising political star. What a rare and unusual combination! Being a person who backs his arguments with clinching facts, he’s a great persuader. As Commerce Minister he earned worldwide admiration at the Cancun trade talks, as a man who stood his ground for India’s --and the Third World’s-- rights at the WTO.
Delivering the 20th anniversary commemoration speech on Jan 3, 2004 at Vigil, a Chennai based public opinion forum, he made many hitherto unknown points. Also, for a very political person, the speech is devoid of overt biases or barbs aimed at domestic political opponents. The transcript of the speech --entitled, ‘India- from Developing to Developed’--, which you can read here, is however somewhat disjointed, as such transcripts are wont to be. For readers of GoodNewsIndia, the following points he makes might be of immediate interest.
How far India seems to have come in the very few years since the creaky, half-century old doors of its closed economy opened? And how far might it now go! Jaitley observes a strange new pattern among the industry tycoons who invariably accompany the Prime Minister during his travels abroad. In the past, Indian companies were looking for collaborators and investors, but now, Jaitley finds, “a very large number declared that they had come to these countries looking for investment avenues and opportunities in those countries. I saw this in China. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of Chinese investors in India.”
Remember the scare of a few years ago, of Chinese goods swamping India? Jaitley recounts how a Chinese Minister who met him recently, was murmuring about Indian products flooding China. He undelines the distinction between China’s State-driven economy and our entrepreneur-driven one in a true democratic framework. It is becoming clear which has the better chance of prevailing over the other.
With his insider-advantage, Jaitley is able to get a measure of how well India’s medical prowess is asserting itself. 30% of all doctors in the US are Indian and 10% of revenue of major hospitals in India is from visiting foreigners. India is now the regional hub for healthcare-- our embassy in Dhaka issues about 400 visas a day on medical grounds. As West ages, the need to care for its elderly has made Indian nurses jump the visa queue ahead even of software engineers.
Knowledge and service are the twin platforms on which India’s success is being built. Jaitley narrates how, until Indian pharma companies jumped in, AIDS ravaged African countries were paying an average of $10,000 a patient per year to West’s drug companies. When companies like Cipla went over with an astounding offer at $300 per patient per annum, they were first accused of IPO violations, and when that didn’t stick, prices suddenly dropped to $1200 an year. Indians retorted by going down to $240.
Of all the distortions in world trade indulged in by the West, the most stark are in agricultural subsidies. Jaitley is fresh from the Cancun battle where he won the day by dint of diligent homework. He says, the US has 2 million farmers and Europe about 5 million. To protect them, various subsidies are heaped on them that make their produces unbeatable in price by India’s half a billion-plus farmers. Lack of world markets combined with domestic surpluses are depressing realised prices [And yet, how often we hear demands for taxing farm incomes in India]. West also practices deceit by giving hidden subsidies in the guise of preserving the environment, livestock, leaving the land fallow and so on.
Jaitley nails the US thus: just about 25,000 farmers grow cotton there. But since they are subsidised to the tune of $3.6 billion, they are closing out four African countries, where cotton is the only crop and millions are breaking their backs growing it. It is India that is giving voice against such injustices.
We are seeing of late how the US is protesting the BPO phenomenon. Would we soon be hearing noises about ‘exploited’ Indian knowledge-workers? Jaitley notes with a chuckle that increasingly, legal drafting work is being outsourced to India. GoodNewsIndia wonders when we would be drafting US legislation. We could then build in some true world-trade, worthy of Adam Smith.
This amusing but true story may well sum up the way East and West would be placed in the emerging world: in the immediate days following 9/11, when there was a huge shortage of flags to wave by US patriots, presses in Hong Kong and Taiwan made a killing working three shifts.
Lead suggested by Pankaj Jain