India is a land of paradoxes! Poverty amidst plenty, high growth rates Vs poor development indicators, surplus food production Vs high starvation deaths, world famous educational institutions Vs pathetic literacy rates and this list is endless. This paradox is captured by well known economist Joan Robinson who said ‘Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true’.
In this interesting article Lant Pritchett introduces a new category to refer to India, namely, ‘flailing state’, by which he means “a nation-state where the head, that is, the elite institutions at the national (and in some states) level remain sound and functional but this head is no longer reliably connected via nerves and sinews to its own limbs”.
He refers to the rampant absenteeism, indifference, incompetence, corruption in police, tax collection, education, health, power and water supply- in nearly every routine service!
What shall we say about the move to increase the number of elite institutions like IIMs, IITs in India? Would this bridge the gap between the head and the limbs or would it lead to further alienation of the limbs from the head?
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