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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Survey lesson for Mamata

Survey lesson for Mamata

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published Published on Mar 16, 2012   modified Modified on Mar 16, 2012
-The Telegraph

The Economic Survey — prepared by Kaushik Basu, chief economic adviser to the finance ministry — has some gratuitous advice for politicians like Mamata Banerjee who announced earlier this week plans to amend state legislation that will require co-operative banks to take government permission before seizing mortgaged property while trying to foreclose loans given to defaulting farmers.

“The state provides the laws and enforcement to enable people to sign contracts,” says the Survey. “In India, the state does a fairly good job in the housing mortgage market and banks and individuals rely on that.”

The Survey says “enforcing complicated or large contracts, especially ones protracted over a long period of time, is the responsibility of the state”.

The report also says that when talking about a nation’s economic progress, attention is usually focused on the government.

However, much also depends on the civil society, firms, farmers, and the ordinary citizens. “Honesty, punctuality, the propensity to keep promises, the attitude to corruption are matters shaped in great part by norms and social beliefs and the behaviour patterns can become habitual,” it adds.

The report says that in a democracy like India “what can be done by the government depends in great measure on how ordinary people think and what people believe in”.

Very little attention was focused on this aspect because there was a general belief that these “non-economic facets of life did not matter”.

“But we now know that a market economy cannot function if people are totally self serving... honesty, integrity and trustworthiness constitute the cement that binds society. At times economists treated these social norms, preferences and customs as unalterable.… But we do know now that these qualities in people can be changed. Honesty and integrity can be nurtured and aversion to corruption can be shored up,” the Survey said.

“If the contractual system in a nation is so weak that when a bank gives a 20-year mortgage to a person for buying a house, there is a high risk of default, the implication of this is not that banks in that country will make large losses. The implication is that banks will not give loans; and the housing market will remain severely underdeveloped,” it added.

The Survey says that societies that have nurtured the qualities of honesty and trustworthiness have done well. “Societies that have done poorly on these (fronts), tend to do poorly in terms of economic progress,” it adds.

Basic literacy and better education will help make people aware of the benefits of these social qualities. People will then demand framing of policies which are truly better and not merely those “that look good on the surface”.

And where do politicians like Mamata Banerjee come in?

The Survey says political leaders and policymakers should act as role models by epitomising and furthering the qualities of honesty, integrity and trustworthiness.

The Telegraph, 16 March, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120316/jsp/nation/story_15257315.jsp


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