What we can learn from Africa and Latin America.

Countries in Africa and Latin America are growing but not as they should because of certain  deficiencies, wrote Professor Noah Smith. Why? In Latin America industries have become very good at what they do but they are not moving up the value chain because trade is restricted by overvalued currencies, while in Africa productivity in industry is not improving as it should. So Latin American countries should try to export more, possibly by weakening their currencies, while African countries have to get more foreign expertise in their industries. Latin America has a relatively low population and a high standard of living. It has huge natural resources but the economy actually contracted in 2016. Brazil had to increase its interest rate to over 14% to control rising inflation, but has been able to reduce it to 12.25%. Inflation had spiked to 10.36% but has cooled to 5.35%. A weak currency will increase prices and make inflation worse. Difficult. Africa is a huge continent with 54 countries, with a total population of 1.2 billion, less than that of India, but it is growing fast and is estimated to double by 2050. A growing population means more jobs have to be created, which means more spending on infrastructure, but that has to be balanced against the immediate need to provide food, healthcare and education. So what about India? We are tiny in area, compared to these two continents, with double the population of the whole of Latin America. Our economy has been growing at over 7% but there are problems, apart from the problems with demonetisation, which are predicted to be temporary. Our main problems are the massive population, crumbling infrastructure and corruption. Add to that extremely toxic neighbors, China and Pakistan, who want to destroy India, and the problems seem insurmountable. The population can be made to shrink by paying subsidies contingent on not having children. Subsidies should be restricted to women and children and men should have to work on infrastructure projects to be paid. Corruption is a mountain weighing us down. Critics are quick to condemn Indians as being genetically corrupt. Are we? The Libor scandal was orchestrated by some of the biggest names in international banking. Volkswagen, a German car maker, was caught cheating on emissions of its diesel engines. The biggest danger of blaming all Indians is that it protects the real source of corruption, which is our politicians and civil servants. Political parties run almost exclusively on black money. There are over 1,900 parties in India and over 400 have never fought an election. The main parties are the main beneficiaries of cash money. That is why high denomination notes were banned suddenly. Punish the whole nation to protect the real crooks.