Paritosh Joshi: From 1901 to 2011, what the census tells us about India’s population. “India’s population grew almost five-fold over 110 years.” And: “The demographic changes which India is grappling with, today and in the future, are rather different from the simplistic tropes of “explosion” fear-mongering. They pertain to the real and present dangers of populations beginning to shrink in several states. They pertain to a diminishing pool of people of working age, the “demographic dividend” which our leaders love to boast about. They pertain to an increasing burden of the aged and infirm on the society, economy and health care infrastructure. There are real demographic problems that need to be solved. But they are not what politicians are trying to scare you with.”
Rakesh Mohan on the need for a third generation of reforms in India: “The first condition for sustained growth is an enhancement of investment levels, both public and private. This would imply an overall increase in fiscal expenditure along with a shift in composition towards higher public investment for the delivery of public goods and services, which, in turn, would crowd in private investment rather than crowding it out. But buoyancy in the tax-GDP ratio does not reflect the sustained growth in GDP of the past three decades, particularly the stagnation experienced over the past decade. Focused attention now needs to be given, to increasing efficiency and compliance in tax-revenue collection so that India’s overall tax-GDP ratio rises to levels consistent with comparable international experience, to finance the needed enhanced public expenditures.”
David Perell: “You have to put ideas into your own words and explain them to others. Or, in the words of philosopher Giambattista Vico: “We only know what we make.””
