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Journalism of Courage
Former governor of Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan said India is making a mistake by believing in the “hype” around its strong economic growth and that many years of hard work still remain to make it real.
In an interview with Bloomberg, he said that the country needs to improve its structural problems, including poor education and skills of the workforce, to meet its true potential. The new government sworn in after the 2024 general elections, as per Rajan, must prioritise fixing these pending issues.
“The greatest mistake India can make is to believe the hype. We’ve got many more years of hard work to do to ensure the hype is real. Believing the hype is something politicians want you to believe because they want you to believe that we have arrived. But it would be a serious mistake for India to succumb to that belief.”
Rajan said India will not be a developed economy by 2047 – the year country will celebrate 100 years of its independence – adding that it would be “nonsense” to talk of that goal “if so many of your kids don’t have a high school education and drop-out rates remain high.”
“We have a growing workforce, but it is a dividend only if they’re employed in good jobs. And that’s, to my mind, the possible tragedy that we face,” he added.
The 61-year-old economist, who is a professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, said the South Asian country needs to put more effort into achieving 8 per cent growth on a sustainable basis.
Rajan also criticised the incumbent government for its focus on high-profile projects like chip manufacturing instead of doing the work to fix the education system.
