'Manmohan lacks clout for farm reform'
India needs to do away with the costly subsidies to transform the agriculture sector but Manmohan Singh lacks the clout Deng Xiaoping had in pushing farm sector reforms in China, said Alan Greenspan.
By Agencies |
NEW DELHI: India needs to do away with the costly subsidies to transform the agriculture sector but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lacks the "authoritarian clout" Deng Xiaoping had in pushing farm sector reforms in China, says Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve.
"Prime Minister Singh is a highly reputable reform- oriented economist, but he does not have the authoritarian clout that enabled Deng Xiaoping to start China's agricultural reform in 1978. Indian democracy is up this task," he writes in his latest book "The Age of Turbulence - Adventures in a New World".
In the book published a year after he completed his term as head of the US central bank, he says that productivity on Indian farms is only one-fourth of what it is in non-farm areas. Rice yield is half the level in Vietnam and a third of China, while wheat yield is three-fourth of China's. India is more productive in only tea than its Asian competitors.
Greenspan, known as an astute policy maker, noted that India's per capita GDP, which was at parity with China in early 1990s, is now only two-fifth of the Communist nation.
While growth in farm productivity has slowed since the 1980s, with weather partly to blame, he pinpointed the main culprit -- a highly subsidised government-directed farm sector that prevents market forces from adjusting acreage usage.
Greenspan, who gives Singh credit for tearing a hole in India's regimented economy in the 1990s through a high dose of liberalisation, sees little possibility for dismantling costly farm subsidies considering the leanings of the Congress party and its coalition partners, particularly the Communists.
"Prime Minister Singh is a highly reputable reform- oriented economist, but he does not have the authoritarian clout that enabled Deng Xiaoping to start China's agricultural reform in 1978. Indian democracy is up this task," he writes in his latest book "The Age of Turbulence - Adventures in a New World".
In the book published a year after he completed his term as head of the US central bank, he says that productivity on Indian farms is only one-fourth of what it is in non-farm areas. Rice yield is half the level in Vietnam and a third of China, while wheat yield is three-fourth of China's. India is more productive in only tea than its Asian competitors.
Greenspan, known as an astute policy maker, noted that India's per capita GDP, which was at parity with China in early 1990s, is now only two-fifth of the Communist nation.
While growth in farm productivity has slowed since the 1980s, with weather partly to blame, he pinpointed the main culprit -- a highly subsidised government-directed farm sector that prevents market forces from adjusting acreage usage.
Greenspan, who gives Singh credit for tearing a hole in India's regimented economy in the 1990s through a high dose of liberalisation, sees little possibility for dismantling costly farm subsidies considering the leanings of the Congress party and its coalition partners, particularly the Communists.
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