Modi’s economic philosophy: 1. Fiscally conservative 2. “Moderniser” - believes in infra development and formalisation 3. New Welfarism - public provision of basic private goods which prevent poverty traps 4. Reformer - orientation towards a greater private sector participation..
…5. Visible hand for manufacturing - industrial and trade policy geared towards making India a manufacturing hub.

That doesn’t make him a Reagan - Thatcher style neoliberal, nor a “socialist”. Maybe a US Whig would be better parallel, but even that is a different context.
This is a description, not praise. I think he is too pedantic (and has been wrong) on fiscal conservatism, mixed bag on modernisation (good on infra, formalisation has been skewed towards push rather than pull), distinctively solid on welfare, good on reforms, and lately good…
…on industrial and trade policy, though trade is still overall poor - has avoided errors like RCEP, and has got PLI going, but hasn’t got FTAs done with major markets in a favourable geopolitical environment. Overall - good, not great, with the fiscal conservatism…..
..:and not solving the TBS, NPA issue, retrospective tax and other such messes quickly and decisively being the biggest error. But long term growth has been put on the right path - not spectacular, but solid high growth with financial stability likely with good welfare as well

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More from @akshayalladi

Nov 21, 2021
Thread: Both the left liberal and non-left in India are largely unintellectual- but in very different ways. The left liberals are largely intellectually derivative - copy pasting ideas from the west as low grade translators. BUT that gives a huge advantage (1/n)
Which is access to a body of knowledge. So from philosophy to rhetoric to even policy detail, there is an advantage of scale, of tapping into that work. And since left liberalism is anyway axiomatic derivation and context independent, the same can be used as is. (2/n)
At best one has to do low grade translation. So race = caste operation gives you a 100 rhetorical devices, policies etc. to do. Sometimes not even that. It isn’t just left that too, even other versions of liberalism are context independent (3/n)
Read 13 tweets
Nov 20, 2021
PVNR was partially “reforms by stealth” and it was also during a crisis. ABV reformed openly. But both lost, not *because* of reforms, but they neither helped nor hurt.

UPA was not “reforms by stealth”, rather zero reforms but massive stealth - stealing public money that is.
Neither is all governance=economic policy, nor is all economic policy = “reforms”. Industrial policy, fiscal policy, infra are not “reforms”, but important, even more critical than “reforms”. And governance goes beyond economic policy as well- defence, education, social issues
Many unlocks are also at the state level for reforms, and not all things that change economic outcomes are strictly *economic* reforms. Take law and order and policing, and local judiciary - all will improve economic outcomes. Local business regulations. Then of course…..
Read 5 tweets
Oct 15, 2021
Thread: “Religion” (actually Dharma, mistranslated) does permeate many aspects of Indian life (it is not just an undercurrent). But actually India or Hinduism isn’t the exception here. Not just Indic faiths, even Islam permeates the lives of its adherents. (1/n)
“Religion”, culture are inextricably linked. That there could be a separation of public and private spheres, and that religion is a matter of “private belief” not necessarily public observance and culture is ONLY Christian theology, and unintelligible to other societies. (2/n)
Scholars such as Jakob de Roover have traced that not just to the separation between the regnum (the realm of the king) and the sacerdotium (the rule of God and the Church), but also to the body- soul and hence belief -practice distinctions in Christianity. (3/n)
Read 10 tweets
Sep 21, 2021
Thread: Last evening, our house owner, whom we had over for dinner, was narrating an anecdote about our villa complex’s watchman from UP. He had gone back home only to find that his brother had sold one of their ancestral lands to someone. The sale was technically “legal” (1/n)
The watchman then appealed to the Panchayat. Not just the Panchayat elders, but even the buyer of the land, on hearing of the fact that the seller had not consulted his own brother before selling their ancestral land, saw that as a violation of “Dharam” (2/n)
The buyer returned the land and got back his money. Everyone involved was convinced that was the right thing to do. We were then musing- how much does our *law* reflect our own customary practices and shared moral intuitions? (3/n)
Read 6 tweets
Aug 30, 2021
Thread: Happy #Janmashtami everyone. Sharing 7 bhajans/ Carnatic songs about Lord Krishna composed (both music and lyrics) by my mother - Smt. Meera Alladi; 5 in Hindi, and 2 Tamil. The first "Govinda, Tere Bina" in Janasammohini ragam, Hindi (1/8)
The second is "Shyam Tere Naam", Jog Ragam, Hindi (2/8)
The third is "Vasudeva Venu Madhava", Bhageshree ragam, Hindi (3/8)
Read 8 tweets
Aug 28, 2021
Musing: If you model sections of the academia and media - what is called the “intellectual ecosystem”, not as a free market, but as a closed oligopoly, actually not even that because there is no market test, then one can see why bad ideas perpetuate. (1/n)
In the “real world” that many of us inhabit, large companies that are not innovative, get disrupted by more agile startups or attackers. That’s not as easy in the “intellectual ecosystem” because there is no currency such as actual consumer purchases, that acts as a test (2/n)
Anyway, as an outsider who is a consumer so to speak of intellectual outputs, I watch out for the heterodox ideas, because those are the “startups”- the ideas that actually merit greater consumption, as they bring fresh novel insight, but get killed in their infancy..::: (3/n)
Read 6 tweets

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