Page 51 - EW November 2023

Satya Nadella Sundar Pichai Arvind Krishna Shantanu Narayen Laxman Narasimhan Ajay Banga
CEO, Microsoft CEO, Google CEO, IBM CEO, Adobe CEO, Starbucks President, World Bank

Gita Gopinath Laxmi Mittal, Chair- Anil Agarwal Leena Nair Sanjiv Lamba Srikant Datar, Dean,
Chief Economist, IMF man, ArcelorMittal Founder, Vedanta CEO, Chanel CEO, Linde Harvard Bschool

Soumitra Dutta, Dean, Abhijit Banerjee Satish K. Tripathi Subra Suresh, Presi- H. Deep Saini Raghuram Rajan
Saïd Bschool (Oxford) Nobel Laureate President, U at Buffalo dent, Carnegie Mellon VC, McGill University University of Chicago

Rishi Sunak Kamala Harris Sue-Ellen Braverman Pramila Jayapal Vivek Ramaswamy US Nikki Haley, US
PM, United Kingdom Vice President, USA Home Secretary, UK U.S. Congress Presidential Candt. Presidential Candt.
citizens from 31 to 71 years; increase in annual per capita nataka (63 million). Unsurprisingly its per capita GDP is
income from Rs.40,000 to Rs.172,000; success of the Green $47,200 cf. India’s $2,600.
Revolution; rise in adult literacy from 16 percent in 1947 Although trumpeted as a great success story especially
to 74 percent; exponential increase in number of college in recent times, viewed objectively, post-independence In-
graduates, and perhaps the success of the Chandrayaan-3 dia’s development track record is dismal. In 1949, on al-
moon mission. most all national development metrics, newly independent
Yet the flaw of establishment spokespersons and supra- India was ahead of China which had just emerged from a
nationalists is that they measure progress in terms of where long war with Japan, and subsequently a civil war between
we were to where we have reached today. Although com- the Kuomintang and Communist Party in which the latter
monplace, this is an erroneous measurement metric. The prevailed. On October 1, 1949, Chairman Mao Tse-tung of
correct, more meaningful metric is to make international the Chinese Communist Party famously declared that after
comparisons, especially with the People’s Republic of China, two centuries of foreign domination, “China has stood up”.
which has a comparable land area and population. Viewed At that time India had also stood up after expelling the
from a global lens, independent India’s wealth creation and Brits and was in a sweet spot with a fairly well-developed
socio-economic development record has been snail-paced. industrial base. In the teeth of opposition from the British
Admittedly, the country’s GDP is the fourth largest in Raj, several resilient, pioneer industrialists including G.D.
the world, and recently overtook that of our erstwhile mas- Birla, J.R.D. Tata, Walchand Hirachand, Lala Shri Ram,
ters, Great Britain. Yet it’s pertinent to note that Britain’s Kasturbhai Lalbhai, and Ambalal Sarabhai had established
population at 67 million is one-twentieth of India’s and less large, thriving conglomerates engaged in the manufacture
than of Tamil Nadu (72 million) and almost equal to Kar- of jute, chemicals, aircraft, shipping, textiles, steel and ce-

NOVEMBER 2023 EDUCATIONWORLD 51