Poverty

[l.m.fosse at easteur-orient.uio.no]

L. M. Fosse wrote:

> time, it is clear that the "Soviet model" adopted by India in 1947 did not
>> do much good for the country.

Narayan S. Raja wrote:

>Actually, I think that's far
>from clear...
....
>Like different stages in the
>life of a person, what may have
>been appropriate forty years ago
>may no longer be appropriate now...

I realize that I am a little out of my depth here, since I am not an
economist. But I think it is relevant to point to a couple of other
countries that for various reasons had a "bad" start: Japan (flattened
after several years of intensive warfare) and Korea (one of the worlds
poorest countries some 40 years ago). We could undoubtedly mention others
as well. These economies have done extremely well, as we all know. We
should also look at the countries that adopted the Soviet model (to more or
less extreme degrees). None of them have done particularly well (some have
turned into outright nightmares) and are striving to reform their economies
now, just like India. I am not competent to engage in a detailed discussion
of what went wrong in India or the other Soviet model countries - I'll have
to leave that to the economists - but the overall picture seems very clear.
But by all means: There are capitalist economies that are in a hopeless
mess: Just look at a number of Latin American countries. And some Soviet
model countries did relatively better than other Soviet model countries, so
we must assume that there are more parameters at play than the mere choice
of economic model.

Best regards,

Lars Martin Fosse



Lars Martin Fosse
Research Fellow
Department of East European
and Oriental Studies
P. O. Box 1030, Blindern
N-0315 OSLO Norway

Tel: +47 22 85 68 48
Fax: +47 22 85 41 40

E-mail: l.m.fosse at easteur-orient.uio.no


 


> From P.Friedlander at wellcome.ac.uk 22 95 Aug EDT 13:38:00
Date: 22 Aug 95 13:38:00 EDT
From: P.Friedlander at wellcome.ac.uk
Subject: Sikh Studies Listserver?
Reply-To: P.Friedlander at wellcome.ac.uk
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

Hello members of the list,
	Do any of you know if there is a similar forum to this on Sikh Studies? 
And if so what is its address?

Peter Friedlander