Singapore had LKY, we had PL480.

"In less than sixty years Singapore has transformed from a poor developing country into one of the richest -- its per capita income is now double that of Australia," wrote S Sabhlok. This is because of Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) who was prime minister of Singapore from 1959-1990. Both Jawaharlal Nehru and LKY started off as socialists, but while Nehru said, "Never talk to me about the word profit; it is a dirty word," LKY learnt free market economics from Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. LKY thought that colonial students who followed Harold Laski's socialist ideas "were to achieve power and run their underdeveloped economies aground." "It was my good fortune that I had several of these failed economies to warn me of this danger before I was in a position to do any harm in government," said LKY. India was one such, having to beg the US for food under the PL480 program. "The year was 1966 and independent India had just embarked on its first experiment with broad-based economic liberalization with a characteristic combination of whim, status-quoism and bad economics," wrote A Mital. India's food shortage was alleviated by an American named Norman Borlaug who introduced a shorter wheat plant with a "compact stalk that supported an enormous head of grain without falling over from the weight". Socialism was added to the Constitution by Indira Gandhi in 1976, and while communist China adopted neoliberal policies under Deng Xiaoping, India still continues to be a socialist country with "Corruption, cronyism, nepotism, investment and divestment based on patronage and not profit," wrote M Kilcoyne. The economy reached such a state that the Reserve Bank of India had to pledge 46.91 tonnes of gold with the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan in 1991 to avoid a balance of payment crisis. "Long before Milton Friedman held up Hong Kong as a model of a free enterprise economy, I had seen the advantage of having little or no social safety net," said LKY. India has a plethora of social schemes, and political parties are promising more schemes to get votes of various groups, without explaining how they will pay for all of them without ruining our finances, wrote PS Jha. Naturally, taxes are low in Singapore while taxpayers in India are subjected to terrorism to frighten them to pay more than they should. Taxpayers end up paying an average of Rs 20,000 more in taxes every year. Civil servants are paid very well in Singapore but there are "extremely strong mechanisms of accountability". In India, civil servants are paid much more than the private sector but no civil servant can even be investigated without permission of the department, giving complete immunity to rogues. So, there we are. India is not Singapore, and never will be.