Should be noted that the previous governor of the Reserve Bank of India who was before that Chief Economist at the IMF is now going around criticizing the Indian government's nascent attempts to kickstart manufacturing instead of following the services-led growth model that he advocates.
We went through two decades where many in the global intellectual class actively campaigned against industrialization, and with degrowth strategies for managing CO2 emissions being in vogue now, there is a risk that such counterproductive advocacy will continue, just as industrialization becomes increasingly harder for the reasons mentioned in the article.
I'm a layperson in these topics, but I've begun to suspect that degrowth is the new expression for what used to be called the "white man's burden", with global warming replacing classical Malthusian overpopulation fears. Particularly as it's applied by first world economies toward developing ones.
I have no problem as a libertarian locking in first mover advantage, but doing it by accusing others of what you yourself are guilty of is disgustingly hypocritical. I've even come to miss the kind of hypocrisy that knows what it's saying and doing, as opposed to the kind that simply takes the status quo for granted as if it had existed forever.
It's also a lot less than the difference between the US and the UK's GDP per capita. It would hurt Americans to have to live like Brits, but British living conditions are far from an existential threat.
I'm worried about the climate impact of economics, not the economic impact of climate change.
We could live with less, and we have to if we want to at least lessen the impact of climate change.
So we need to get a concerted effort going for degrowth in the world. But it looks like every country is still aiming for maximum industrialization and growth, which is understandable since it's individual optimization.
Eh, this is a bit misleading without context. The person in question is Raghuram Rajan. He is not criticising manufacturing led growth, but the idea that India can blindly follow the path that China took, simply because the world is very different now than 30 years ago when it comes to globalisation.
He thus thinks it is more appropriate to "make for India" than "make in India", the latter being the name of the initiative the current government started back in 2014 - when he was the governor of RBI. Also he has been saying it since 2014 at least, not "now" as the parent implies.
He's been pretty explicitly against manufacturing-led growth and in favor of services-led growth. And indeed "make for India" strategy would mean India remains a net manufacturing importer as it makes some goods for itself and imports others, without any exports to balance out the goods it cannot produce.
I am not sure your sources are in disagreement with what I said. You are hypothesizing a situation where only manufacturing exports can balance out manufacturing imports, but that is not true - we gain capital from service exports also.
It is fine to disagree with him, but your logic isn't sound. I personally also think India needs more industrialisation but that's not in conflict with what Rajan is saying.
This characterization of Raghuram Rajan is seriously misleading. He has never advocated against manufacturing. He's cautioning that we(I'm Indian) won't be able to replicate China's rate of progress as the conditions in the world are different now.
The previous RBI governor is entering politics and joining the opposition, so his current opinions should be taken as political rather than purely academic.
I don't follow what he says but I very much doubt his current opinions are any different from before. I've been reading about India + service economy + how great service economies are + how India can skip the manufacturing phase of a developing economy and jump straight into service economy in mainstream media articles in both US and India since at least early 2000s.
To provide more context on this, Raghuram Rajan participated in a march across India led by the then leader of opposition. He has not in any official capacity joined the opposition.
We went through two decades where many in the global intellectual class actively campaigned against industrialization, and with degrowth strategies for managing CO2 emissions being in vogue now, there is a risk that such counterproductive advocacy will continue, just as industrialization becomes increasingly harder for the reasons mentioned in the article.