Winning the economic race

Letter August 01, 2011
Now appears that India’s system today is not much better than Pakistan’s, which has lower poverty and less inequality.

SAN FRANCISCO: This is with reference to Kuldip Nayar’s article of August 1 titled “What have India’s reforms achieved?”.  As part of India’s 2G scandal revelations last year, the billionaire businessman Mukesh Ambani was quoted as saying that the ruling Congress Party is ‘apni dukan’, implying that he owns the ruling party.  The scandal also produced evidence of collusion of India’s corporate-owned mainstream media in their deliberate attempts to impose a blackout on the whole affair until it was finally broken by the relatively obscure Open magazine.

India has become an oligarchy controlled by its 55 billionaires whose wealth equals one-sixth of their country’s GDP.  Back in 1988, Pakistani economist Dr Mahbubul Haq said that “our system has all the worst features of oligarchy and democracy put together.” It now appears that India’s system today is not much better than Pakistan’s, which has lower poverty and less inequality between the rich and the poor

Riaz Haq

Published in The Express Tribune, August 2nd, 2011.