India y China

Johan Norberg está viajando por India y China. Vengo siguiendo lo que cuenta del viaje, de sus impresiones del notable crecimiento de la región. Hoy leo este comentario sobre la India:

It has been pointed out to me that I forgot to mention infrastructure in my India vs China post. Of course. That was so obvious that I forgot to mention it. On the Indian highways we made 40 kilometers/hour when we were lucky. In China that is called a traffic jam.

Now they are investing more in this, but it´s not about money as such, the problem is the lack of accountability and incentives. Indian bureaucrats keep their jobs no matter if they spend the resources on physical and social infrastructure or on themselves. This is a serious problem with the schools. Unionised teachers keep their well-paid jobs even if they are bad, abuse the children or don´t even bother to turn up. That´s one of the reasons why India´s illiteracy rate is absurdly high - 40 percent. As many Indians I met said, India desperately needs a school voucher system, so that the money follows the pupils, not the teachers.

La verdad es que me hizo acordar mucho a la situación de otro país del tercer mundo, muy cercano a todos nosotros. Los problemas son básicamente los mismos en todos los países pobres.