Advisers to India's Modi Dream of a Thatcherite Revolution

[JI7]

When Indian opposition leader Narendra Modi gave a speech on the virtues of smaller government and privatization on April 8 last year, supporters called him an ideological heir to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died that day.

"If you define Thatcherism as less government, free enterprise, then there is no difference between Modi-nomics and Thatcherism," said Deepak Kanth, a London-based banker now collecting funds as a volunteer for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Kanth, who says he is on the economic right, is one of several hundred volunteers with a similar philosophy working for Modi in campaign war-rooms across the country. Among them are alumni of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan trading floors.

"What Thatcher did with financial market reforms, you can expect a similar thing with infrastructure in India under Modi," he said, referring to Thatcher's trademark "Big Bang" of sudden financial deregulation in 1986.

Modi's inner circle also includes prominent economists and industrialists who share a desire to see his BJP draw a line under India's socialist past, cut welfare and reduce the role of government in business.


http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/06/us-india-election-modi-insight-idUSBREA3500S20140406

[Dawson Leery]

1. Modi is a horror show.

Granted, India has a massive bureaucracy left over from British rule that needs to be significantly downsized, that does not mean you should eliminate programs to help people eat/learn/open their own business/education, etc.

India could be making a terrible mistake.

[JI7]

2. exactly, it's probably one of the reasons india has not had the problems that many other

poorer nations have faced . they got rid of polio recently and literacy numbers are pretty high for a country like that.

so now these guys want to get rid of programs that made these things possible.

most of the problems in the country are due to religion and backwards areas where people refuse to send kids to school and make them work just because that's how it's always been for them before.

[Dawson Leery]

3. The Singh government has opened India to small/medium businesses, both domestic and foreign.

It looks like Modi is going to skew the rules towards the oligarchs which in turn will kill innovation.

[bananas]

4. Modi-nomics, Abe-nomics, it's a neocon world. nt

[rm82222]

5. from the reagan administration on

its the us foreign policy that screws everything on this planet

[TBF]

6. I think you need to go back

a little further. This country has been imperialist from the get-go. Reagan and GWB did put the war-mongering on steroids tho, I will say that.

Welcome to DU