India – The Superpower

The Indian government subsidizes many industries and products, from gasoline to food. Loss-making state-owned enterprises are supported by the government. Water is free and paid by the state. Farmers are given electricity for free. Overall, a 2005 article by International Herald Tribune stated that subsidies amounted to 14% of GDP. As much as 39 % of subsidized kerosene is stolen.
On the other hand, India spends relatively little on education, health, or infrastructure. Urgently needed infrastructure investment has been much lower than in China. According to the UNESCO, India has the lowest public expenditure on higher education per student in the world.
India’s vast subsidies have been severely criticized by the World Bank as increasing economic inefficiency.
According to a 2005 World Bank estimate, 42% of India falls below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day (PPP, in nominal terms 21.6 a day in urban areas and 14.3 in rural areas) (Source: Wikipedia)
That effectively means that a major chunk of our taxes are being used for purposes that are not even remotely benefitting us. If we get rid of the close to 50% of the population that is reeling in poverty, a significant amount of the government revenue can be used for other purposes. India has the potential to be a superpower. It doesn’t need twenty years of double digit growth to do that. It is one of the largest economies in the world. However, India is the most backward in every aspect, be it human development Index, malnutrition, life expectancy, hygiene, medical and educational facilities, infrastructure – name it and India is backward in it. However, if all the government subsidies are removed from the national expenditure, India can be the most envied country in all facilities.
Imagine India where –
The roads are without potholes and without traffic jams? It would save a huge amount of fuel and reduce the pollution in the cities. We would have cleaner airs.
The rivers in all the metropolitan cities are clean. You can take your children for rafting or boating every evening. There is no need to plan a vacation and travel to Nainital for that.
The parks are cleaner. Buses are safer and suited for your family to travel around the city.
Government hospitals which were once looked down are more trusted than private big names like Apollo, Dr. Max etc.
Policemen treat you like their superiors and behave like true public servants. Absence of pesky slum dwellers gives them a lot of relief from many troubles and they have all the time to listen to your problems.
Post-offices, PF offices, Nationalized banks are free of long queues of laborers waiting and you can walk straight up to the counter to get that DD made for your child’s college application.
Anyone can just take a walk in their neighborhood at midnight without the fear of being robbed or being called robbers.
Such an India can only be achieved if we eliminate all the slum dwellers. Often, many individuals claim that our vast population is the reason for our economic supremacy which is incorrect. It is only a small percentage of the middle class that earn revenue for the country in return for nothing. Ways to cut down the unwanted population in the country would be to implement stringent birth control measures. This may appear crude to some but in real, preventing the birth of a child who is destined to suffer is actually a way to help that child. By no means I am trying to say that we should treat human beings as unwanted entities. The illiterate masses mass produce children as a way to earn income for the family. It is impossible to educate them into thinking otherwise.
Many people argue that our economy survives on the slum dwellers who provide cheap labor. That is absolutely incorrect for a twenty first century India. When was the last time you found a slum dweller manually digging a hole to fit a lamp-post? There are machines to do everything. We white-collared people can ourselves do most of the labor that these slum dwellers do. We can do it much faster and efficient for that matter. The absence of laborers would create huge vacuum for labor in various industries. Well, that would only increase labor costs because the present middle class would certainly demand a high salary for doing labor. That is alright. We can bear with that. The absence of slum dwellers gives us so many facilities for free and our expenses would be minimal. Buses and other public transport would be cleaner for civilized people to travel. We wouldn’t need to spend so much on security as most of the criminals have been eliminated. Government medical facilities are all there for us to enjoy. The lack of filth, dirty sewage and stagnant water would by itself rid the country of many diseases. So what else do we need to spend on? Other than food, almost everything is free. In fact, since the government doesn’t have to give free electricity to farmers or subsidized diesel or kerosene, the price of fuel itself would go down. Our electricity bills would reduce. There would be no electricity thefts. We can rid ourselves of the reservation policy because there would be none who are poor and belonging to this country. This way deserving candidates would get placements in institutes of their choice.
People would ask what would happen to agriculture. The Indian agriculture is the most inefficient because there are just too many people who have divided lands into several small patches. Fertilizing, irrigating and cultivating using large machinery on a very very large tract of land is far more efficient. We can just distribute the lands to large industries like Reliance or Tata and the government can own a large stake in it. In the US, using the labor of just one or two people, farmers grow crops on several thousand acres of land. We in India use the labor of several thousand people for cultivation on the same amount of land. So that eliminates the need of human labor in agriculture. We would then be self-sufficient on food and can in fact even export a lot of it.
Well, if there is such a huge vacuum for labor and just no one is getting tempted despite good salaries, we can follow the procedure of the Arab countries. Issue visas to Bangladeshi laborers or Nepali laborers for the purpose. However, they should never be given a citizenship no matter for how long they live here.
Our country being transformed into the US is just a few decades away if we can effectively implement this process.