Yes, India’s golden age may be near, and Russia will love it

I have an issue with a gentleman whose name is Mody… No, I’m not going into that famous debate with Rahul Gandhi. My target is Ashoka Mody, visiting professor of international economic policy at Princeton University, who previously worked for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He is also writing for Project Syndicate, and his recent column fumes about “hype over India’s economic boom”, which is “a dangerous myth masking real problems”. That’s an absolutely Russian story. To remind, in my previous column I was mentioning another economist from the US, who was fiercely disputing estimates of the same International Monetary Fund, claiming that the Russian economy contracted by only 2.2 per cent in 2022, while at the start of the war, IMF had forecasted a recession of 8.5 per cent. No, says this writer, it cannot be, maybe the figures will be quietly revised to a figure closer to minus 3 or even 4 per cent. That “it cannot be” mood is very visible in Ashoka Mody’s column. He, too, is fighting the IMF with its forecasts about India’s GDP increasing by 6.1 per cent this year and 6.8 per cent next year, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Which has restarted the talk about the advent of an Indian decade or even an Indian century. While in fact, writes this man, “India is barrelling down a perilous path”. And then he lists all the things that are wrong with your\his country. That’s “anaemic job creation”, when 7 million to 9 million new jobseekers enter the market each year. Or the fact that India, with its 1.4 billion people, exports about the same value of manufactured goods as Vietnam does with 100 million people. Yes, we all know how to do such things. We have, during our lifetime, met a lot of people who had mastered the art of cherry-picking only the negative facts and figures to prove their bleak estimates. And why should Mody do otherwise, if he has made his reputation with a book called India is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today. So, India is broken. China is broken too – I could name a bunch of America-based experts formerly from China, predicting annually the crash of the country. And, naturally, Russia is broken too, and there is quite a lot of experts from my country who have moved to the West, or still stay in Russia, and who will tell you that we don’t have a chance. First of all, it’s simple psychology. If you decide to mentally abandon your nation and maybe leave it, you need to acquit yourself in your own eyes, so you constantly look for new proof to measure the wisdom of your decision to emigrate, mentally or physically. Second, probably any society has people who failed in their home country, so the easiest thing is to blame the whole country, not yourself. There is a meme circulating about a scene in the good old Soviet Union of the 1970s, when the dissident movement ideology began to take shape. The base of their ideology was exactly that the country was broken and hopeless, its whole culture, history and society dragging it down. So, imagine the scene: a group of dissidents are sitting on the beach of Crimea on a nice summer evening. “Look at that lovely sunset," sounds a voice. “There can be no lovely sunsets in this country,” hisses another voice. Today, the same kind of people in Russia are trying the same trick and we are not alone in this regard. There are lengthy discussions about the mentality of those capable of bringing the nation if not into the Russian age, then to a totally new and glorious economy. Yes, some people are saying, there is a real strong inflow of money into the country, yes, there are clever entrepreneurs willing to risk starting something that will bloom only in 20 years or so, and, yes, we have a huge inflow of skilled people formerly being Ukrainians, and their energy is virtually exploding in the new environment. But still “it’s broken”. To succeed, you have to be sure of success. And I sincerely hope there are enough Indians who are optimistic about their country. By the way, Russia in general (minus the dissidents) would not only love to see the Indian age but would be willing to help you in that regard. So, can you, or cannot achieve that goal? One thing I’m sure of is that mentality is the key in such cases. The “broken nation” mentality murders all the chances. While the opposite kind of thinking starts the right process. Malaysia’s experience is vital here. I have to say that this is the country I truly love, and one of the reasons is a real miracle that was happening to it before my own eyes, starting from my first visit there in 1987. That year I saw a lovely, but obviously third-world, agricultural and very poor country, where there were, surprisingly, a lot of clever people sure of their inevitable success. And each new visit demonstrated to me that the success was getting bigger and bigger. We are talking about the first premiership of a great leader, Mahathir Mohamad (1981-2003) – and, yes, he’s alive today, being 97 years of age, albeit his political health may not be the best. He inherited a country producing rubber, tin, some rice and fruit, and handed it down with own motorcar industry, strong electronics, wonderful architecture and with a population almost reaching European standards of living. His small country became respected in the world, people listened to what Malaysians had to say. So, how did they do it? I’ve spent a lot of good years, writing about it. Today I think that the key was Mahathir’s famous slogan, “Malaysia Boleh” – Malaysia Can Do It. All the rest was just a consequence of that mood. So, India can do it, have no doubts about it. The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications. Views are personal.  Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.