Comment by collabs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by collabs | Hacker News Reader

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> It baffles me that country still has strong anti-capitalist views.

I wouldn't call the "license raj" of India as anti-capitalist. India arguably has the strongest of institutions of all the countries in South Asia. However, even its institutions and regulations are pathetically weak.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

You probably also saw a previous post right here on this orange website when someone tried to repatriate their business money outside of India. It was painful just to read that they had to get approvals from iirc sixteen different government agencies to get their own money that they brought in from outside of India back. Not profits, not proceeds, a fraction of what they put in.

Neither of these two cases is due to "anti-capitalist" views of India. If you look at what was India before Moghul rule and British rule, you could argue India has never been socialist before.

I think workers everywhere should have "strong anti-capitalist views", because unrestrained capitalism is just anarchy.

I think that's a bad read of Indian institutions. They are incredibly powerful - in fact, they are far too powerful. That's the problem. The license raj is the epitome of authoritarian, centralized political and economic power. I suppose it was justified on socialist grounds, but it would be fair to say that saying so doesn't make it so! Before 91, nothing, and I mean nothing, could happen without government say-so.

The problem with Indian institutions is that they are far too powerful, centralized and bureaucratic. Just read the article - the problem was created by a lazy, corrupt, powerful and centralized bureaucratic system. The solution was to dismantle it and decentralize power.

I apologize I am not very good at expressing myself. Could India be better? Of course! Anyone can be better than what they are. Like a fish that lives in water doesn't ever think about water, an Indian living in India does not think about the absurdity of how powerful a District Collector / District Magistrate (DM) / Deputy Commissioner (DC) is in contemporary India.

> I think that's a bad read of Indian institutions. They are incredibly powerful - in fact, they are far too powerful. That's the problem. The license raj is the epitome of authoritarian, centralized political and economic power. I suppose it was justified on socialist grounds, but it would be fair to say that saying so doesn't make it so! Before 91, nothing, and I mean nothing, could happen without government say-so. > The problem with Indian institutions is that they are far too powerful, centralized and bureaucratic. Just read the article - the problem was created by a lazy, corrupt, powerful and centralized bureaucratic system. The solution was to dismantle it and decentralize power.

What you are saying is absolutely true. the bureaucracy in India is absolutely lazy, corrupt, powerful, and centralized. It is also arguably one of the biggest reasons why India has never had a (successful) military coup. You could even argue the inefficiency and the sluggishness of the bureaucracy is a feature and not a defect.

I think this is a self-deprecating canard that's oft-repeated, but I think fails the credibility test and encourages a kind of fatalistic resigned attitude among Indians. Are we to take from this that efficient bureaucracies lead inevitably to coups? Is the pathetic state of most African countries a result of their stellar bureaucracies?

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