Back to Being ‘Third World’?

Context: India’s response to pandemic proves that India is back to being a “Third World” country.

Arguments that prove India is an “Emerging Market”: rather than a “Third World” country.

• India provides aid to foreign countries:
• Recent triumphs of India: This resulted in India being compared with countries like China.
• India’s capacity to respond to crisis: E.g. during the COVID crisis, India’s Medical oxygen production is said to have been ramped up by 70 % in a month, scaled-up manufacture of personal protective equipment etc.

Features of “Third World” country: that is still prevalent in India, and thus India is still a “Third World” country

• Need for emergency help from overseas: Because of extraordinary bungling and incompetence.
• Institutional weakness: E.g. failure to set up planned oxygen plants and to ramp up vaccine manufacturing capacity.
• Prickliness about criticism.
• Inadequacies in infrastructure: Like not having a proper public health infrastructure.
• Lack of accountability and systemic checks: E.g.  No adequate action being taken against those responsible for the failure to set up sanctioned oxygen plants.

Conclusion: To make progress from being a “Third World” country, we should stop premature triumphalism and should take a mature view of acknowledging failures and successes, the jobs done and remaining to be done.