Are the Indian social safety nets sufficient?
There is no substitute for giving people the capabilities to be productive workers. We are not a rich country. How much redistribution can we afford? Which means schools, healthcare, some level of insurance, financing, access to markets; roads that connect them to bigger markets; railway and transport lines. In a sense you have to move the vibrant economy into interior parts of India. So, I would say that many of these schemes are palliatives to keep the pressure down before they explode. I think they are necessary, but you can’t let palliatives overcome what is essential—creating those capabilities. There are ways, but they are enveloped in the old ways of socialist thinking, which I think is holding us back in tremendous ways. But this will take time, while aspirations have taken flight. So will people have the patience to wait? They won’t. This is why governance is difficult. I can sit here and preach, but somewhere out there someone has to balance it. While they are acquiring those
