So much so that, even today, India’s literacy rate is just 77%, and China has almost cent per cent literacy. That’s a huge difference. From where will you get innovation if your kids are not well-educated? And even if they are educated, they are just moving towards the service sector rather than the line of innovation. How will you lead the world? Just having democracy will not take you anywhere if those casting their vote are not educated enough.
This summary is AI-generated. Please read the full article for complete understanding.
Questioner: I am Suraj Kumar Das, pursuing my PhD here in Economics. Now I would like to start with a question that touched the heart of every person in this room. Along with us, many countries like China and Japan got their independence or overcame some sort of calamities or adversities. How come they have progressed so far in the world economy while we have lagged behind?
Acharya Prashant: See, what you call progress, measured by many indicators, most importantly GDP, is not something totally external. It is driven by something internal in the first place. So we look at the total production, then consumption, and then we say this is the net economic output. We look at the size of the military. We look at technologies and innovations. We look at the length of railroads. We look at energy and steel production. And in looking at all these things, it is easy to miss the inner driver of external order.
Because when we are talking of external production, then we definitely mean something that comes from a structure, an order, right? It's not like a random tree in the jungle that flowers and fruits at its appointed time. You're talking of roads, you're talking of factories, you're talking of ports and airports, and they require order.
