Crony capitalism: India
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
The Economist’s crony-capitalism index
2016: India improves, is praised
In terms of its rank India remained, as in 2014, the ninth worst (or 14th best) country among the 22 surveyed. There was no other South Asian country in the list. China remained the 11th worst (or 12th best).
India-related excerpts: “It may seem that this new golden era of crony capitalism is coming to a shabby end. In London Vijay Mallya, a ponytailed Indian tycoon, is fighting deportation back to India as the authorities there rake over his collapsed empire…
“Encouragingly, India seems to be cleaning up its act. In 2008 crony wealth reached 18% of GDP, putting it on a par with Russia. Today it stands at 3%, a level similar to Australia. A slump in commodity prices has obliterated the balance sheets of its Wild West mining tycoons. The government has got tough on graft, and the central bank has prodded state-owned lenders to stop giving sweetheart deals to moguls. The vast majority of its billionaire wealth is now from open industries such as pharmaceuticals, cars and consumer goods. The pin-ups of Indian capitalism are no longer the pampered scions of its business dynasties, but the hungry founders of Flipkart, an e-commerce firm.
“Indians elect[ed] Arvind Kejriwal, a maverick anti-corruption campaigner, to run Delhi.
“If global growth ever picks up commodities will recover, too—along with the rents that can be extracted from them. In countries that are cleaning up their systems, or where popular pressure for a clean-up is strong, such as Brazil, Mexico and India, reform is hard.”
PM Modi “trying to subject the economy to a blast of competition“, says The Economist.
