Nobel Laureate and economist Joseph E Stiglitz said on Thursday that the major impediment for India to sustain its high economic growth is lack of infrastructure and wrong regulations.
"The major impediment to sustain growth is not collecting taxes, but lack of infrastructure and the wrong regulations. Not excessive regulations but the wrong regulations, that is you need excessive regulations in some areas and some areas less," Stiglitz told reporters in Bangalore at the Bangalore Workshop on Information and Communication Technology for Sustainable Development.
Delivering his talk on "Technology and the Indian Miracle: Lessons for India and Beyond", Stiglitz said besides improving infrastructure including cheap and reliable communication, the regulatory policies should be a key driver to ensure there are no monopolies and competition is enhanced.
Pointing out that India's economic miracle began even before the reforms of the early 1990s, Stiglitz, a former chief economist of the World Bank and former chairman of the White House council of economic advisers under the then President Bill Clinton, said, parts of the country, such as Bangalore, have been even more impressive, rivaling the East Asian miracle.
Asserting that India's growth was broad-based, he said the greatest success centred on rapid advances in technology.
"What separates developing countries from developed countries is not only gap in resources, but gap in technology and knowledge," Stiglitz, a professor of economics and finance at Columbia University, said.
India, he said, for long had underemployed high skilled workers, who migrated abroad particularly to the US, adding that technology offered opportunities for them to remain in the country.
How can Bangalore's success be replicated elsewhere, with large differences in economic performances across India? Stiglitz pointed out that the country could learn from the success of the East Asian countries by emphasising on technology, education, jobs, employment and equality with the state playing the catalytic role.
He also said other developing countries could learn from the Indian experience, which demonstrated that successful policies were "homegrown", not imposed from abroad.
The three-day conference organised by the Carnegie Mellon University has support of US National Science Foundation, the World Bank, the United Nation, Indian Institute of Science and the National Institute of Advanced Studies.
President A P J Abdul Kalam will participate on Friday for the valedictory function of the workshop, which seeks to propose a research agenda, which can lead to universal availability, accessibility and affordability of Information and Communication Technologies.
