Launch Discussion on A Sixth Of Humanity Independent Indias Development Odyssey Authored by Dr Devesh Kapur and Dr Arvind Subramanian

0:00too, but healthy life expectancy is about 10 years less, it's only about 60. So that means there's a huge burden on the individual, the family as well as on the health system ultimately because of the burden of illness. So we're not doing enough to prevent that burden of disease. That means you have to focus on prevention. And prevention essentially means you have to provide, you know, clean air, clean water, sanitation, nutritious diet, good housing. So what are all the social determinants of health? So I think an analysis will show that investing more in prevention. And if you look at our health expenditure, not only is it well below what was committed in the National Health Policy 2017, it was committed that India would reach 2.5% of GDP expenditure on health. That is from the government because otherwise what happens today is out of pocket expenditures is still very high. And when you

1:01have out of pocket expenditure, then you know, it's basically driving people who are already just above the poverty line into poverty. It's the biggest health expenditures are the biggest driver of sudden catastrophic expenditure resulting, you know, in a huge loss of financial resources for the family, but also you cannot provide ongoing quality care. So investing in institutions, for example, that will develop those policies. Hot Thailand again has an institute for health policy and health promotion. And what they do is very clever. They use the taxes from tobacco, alcohol, and even from sugary beverages. So whatever they call a syntax, they take that and they put it into an institution which is actually working towards health promotion. And the state then adopts those policies because it's developed by experts. So maybe I'll stop at this point in these comments. Thank you, Dr. Sonia.

2:03Would you like to talk to me? Yeah. So now may I invite Dr. Sobrow to offer some comments? Please. There is wonderful to be here at this book event at Sixth of Humanity. Alexander the Great, after conquered the known world, you worried that there will no more lands to conquer. Similarly, prospective writers who want to write books on India will worry that there's nothing more to write, because I've been a deviation of covered almost everything, and everything that needs to be straight up on India. However, I've been told me two years ago that deviation, they were going to write this book. I wondered how they were going to capture the complexity and diversity of the India story over the last 75 years into a comprehensive narrative. I'll explain that in the event that they've done an amazing job in helping us understand India over the last 75 years, provide answers to

3:09questions that we normally ask, even provoke questions that we didn't think we could ask, and great job. The Financial Times has chosen this book as one of the best books of 2025. So congratulations to Avinan Devish. What I want to do over the next 15 minutes given to me is say three things, why three reasons, why you must read this book, then I'll comment about three issues and the last three questions. Actually, I made notes for 45 minutes, I don't know how far I will go, but let's see how far I will go. The first reason, the many reasons you must read this book, but the first reason is that this book explains not just how things happened, but why they happened the way they did. No, there are hundreds of books in India. They're all written from a specialist viewpoint, either history or economics or political science or whatever,

4:11but there are very few books which combine a variety of disciplines and explain not only how things happened, but why they happened. This book bends the suspense of history, political science economics, explains why things happened the way they did, and importantly, they don't make assertions, they back everything they say, by data and analysis. The common thing was to state that Avinan spoke about, I just want to give illustrate what I said with that example. No, democracies are supposed to be ruled by majority, but in practice, they're a coalition of vested interests. And this coalition of vested interests militates against the common interests, and that's what they show in this book. You know, Avin talked about all the vested interests garnering the benefits of taxation, all the vested interests garnering the benefits of public

5:13expenditure. Why does that happen? Because the state is a comedy new state. So the first reason you must read this book is they explain why things happened the way they did. The second thing, the second reason you must read this book is they explain some other developments that run counter to conventional theory. Again, take for example divergence across states that both Avinan spoke about. You know, in theory and in practice, there should be no divergence across states in a large country. You know, where in a large country, inter-regional disparities should diminish. They should decline over time. We've seen this happen in many large countries. Why does that happen? That happens because of free movement of people, goods, services, finance, ideas across borders of states. So inter-state, inter-regional disparities should

6:17decline over time. And that's what happened in many large countries. In fact, the secret to American success is the free labor mobility. People moved where jobs were. They moved to California when they were job state and they moved to Texas, they moved elsewhere now. But that's not happened in India. In India, disparities have actually increased over time. And actually, what I liked about the book is they're going to granular detail and explain some of the things that happened in our own country. Take for example, Punjab and Haryana. One state until the mid-1970s and same institutions, same cultures, same traditions, same natural resources and governments. But Haryana is today the richest state in the country. And Punjab has regressed. Why does that happen? The Bihar states, you know, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and UP. Over the last 25 years since that phrase has been coined, Bihar, excuse me, Rajasthan,

7:20and Madhya Pradesh have moved out of that capture that UP and Bihar state remain there. Bihar is the poorest state in the country as they're shown in the chart. And UP has used untapped potential. Why is that happened? West Bengal, once the frontier state in the country, capital of colonial India, most industrialized state, the day it is a laggard. Kerala, a very unique model, you know, Kerala has no agriculture as they say, no agriculture, no manufacturing, no services, but still the best human resource indicators of the country. In fact, Kerala economy is more linked to the Gulf economy than to the Indian economy. So this chapter on what they call India's India's succeeding and failing uniquely a wonderful chapter, very, very revealing. So, that's the second reason you must read this book because it explains why developments in India have gone against conventional theory and against tax program understanding.

8:24The third reason, and this is my view is the most important reason why you must read this book, is that they take a bold stand. They're not afraid to take an unconventional unorthodox stand. You know, somebody told me that you should never ever make a statement that a reasonable person cannot disagree with. You should never ever make a statement that a reasonable person cannot disagree with. By that test, this book passes, that test, eminently. You know, for example, this parity across state, I mean, spoke about that, you know, there is in every country, in every federation, there are grants and devolutions from the higher level to the lower levels of government that happens in all federation in the US and Canada, in Australia and South Africa, in Nigeria, it happens in India too. And we justified that saying that they should not

9:24divide variations across countries, they should be cross-subsidization. So, it's okay for developed states to contribute, to develop these states. For example, the DEC, the Tarnatic and Tamil Nadu, they get much less than a rupee for every rupee they contribute to the center tax pool, they get much less than a rupee. States like UP and Bihar, for every rupee they contribute to the center tax pool, they get much more. That's okay, that's understandable, that they should be a cross-subsidization in one country. But what does it do? The creates a moral hazard, that lower levels of government lose the urge or the push to raise their own resources, which is what I've been just talking about. But people don't talk about this, because it is a holy car, you know, you have to say that you have to subsidize the poorest state. No, I was, I'm from out in the village, and 30 years ago when India was our chief minister, we had the

10:28Panchayat elections after many, many years. I think there were about 15,000 Panchayats. So, after the elections, we had somebody advised the chief minister, so you must call all the Panchayat presidents for a convention. So, there were about 15,000 freshly elected Panchayat presidents meeting the chief minister, wonderful opportunity, and we wrote notes for the CM saying, sir, you must tell Panchayat presidents to tell them to raise their own resources. You know, because raising their own resources actually improves accountability. I remember, many of you may not remember, but 30 years ago, in West Bengal, they said for every patient that comes to a government hospital, we'll select two rupees. Two rupees is a small amount, is a small amount today, was a small amount, even 40 years ago. But people don't raise you on how can you collect two rupees, but actually what happened was that people paid the two rupees fee, it increased their accountability. They could demand service, that we are paying two rupees with demand service.

11:32So, similarly, Panchayats must collect their own taxes. So, in NTR's notes, we wrote, sir, you must tell Panchayat presidents to raise their own taxes, in addition to what we were able to give. They were spoke about how we're not giving money to the third tier, we're not giving enough money, but the third tier also must raise its own money. You know, what the Panchayat president said? You think we got elected to raise money? We were elected to spend money, but you must give us the money. So, that's the third reason, I think you should read this book, because I, in this book, I read in a Danish call, there's a moral hazard. As much as you must cross such a dice, but the limits to this, and what happens, because of this, the evolutions from the top, is that there is no pressure or lower levels of government to raise their own taxation. Most people, fiscal experts, say that taxation powers have been taken away from lower levels of government, that is not true. There are still

12:35enough avenues for lower levels of government to raise taxes. They don't want to do it because they want the pleasure of spending without the pain of taxation. And this is an unconventional bold statement to make in the book. So, these are the three reasons why, three of the many many reasons, why you must read this book. Now, very quickly, I want to touch on three issues. The first is the fiscal consolidation and macroeconomic stability. They asked the question, why has, why have markets not punished India, like they have punished Pakistan, Argentina, Brazil, and Turkey? As I've been explained, it is not true that they're not punished India. We will punished in 1991 balance of payments crisis. We were punished in 2013, tapered tantrums crisis. When I was the governor, we were nearly punished. And the reason we did not get into big crisis is that we did not come as much of a sin as Pakistan, Argentina did. But one thing I want to say on this occasion is that, no,

13:41fiscal consolidation has improved, has improved since I was finance secretary has improved since our win was chief economic advisor, but we cannot declare victory. We still have a lot of way to go in order to declare victory on fiscal consolidation. The central government has done reasonably well over the last five, six years on fiscal credibility, debt to GDP ratio has come down, but it is still 60 percent. The FRBM committee said it must be 40 percent. As I've mentioned, interest payments of the central government and state governments, they're the largest single item of expenditure in every budget. They're the fastest growing item of expenditure in every budget. So to believe that we've beaten fiscal consolidation, we've reached it is not correct. A lot of people say that, you know, our debt to GDP ratio is lower. Look at Japan,

14:46look at the US, look at the UK, look at Europe, they debt to GDP ratio, Japan is 250 percent most European countries, America, they're all about 100 percent, our debt to GDP is only about 60 percent, whatever. The India is more 65 percent, it's closer to 75 percent on state. So it's it actually, I think it's much higher, our debt to GDP ratio is, you know, quite low compared to its countries, but actually that is not a safety indicator because we can get into that trap at a much lower debt to GDP ratio. I heard all of you to actually reach a decent note to the FRBM committee, very explained why we must continue to worry about our debt to GDP ratio. On this issue, it's also important to look at the states. Now, most people I meet, there's,

15:49you know, lots of people come to India, there's investment banks, we've met 20 India and study the situation. Where did you go? We went to Delhi, went to Mumbai. I tell them that Delhi and Mumbai are not India. India is a large country, there's states. And if we look up, even for the, no, even fiscal deficit, people look at the central fiscal deficit, central fiscal consolidation, but what matters collectively for our macroeconomic stability is the combined fiscal stance of the center and states. There's actually a 6040 picture which they show in the book, which is that if you take the total expenditure, excuse me, first let's talk about taxation, if you take the total taxation of the center and states, the central government collects about 60% of the combined tax and states collect 40%. 60% central government 40% states. If you take the combined

16:50expenditure, the center gets to spend 40%. State gets to spend 60%. So what's happening is, states collect 40% of taxation, get to spend 60%. Central collects 60% of the tax gets to spend 40%. So the state's collective fiscal stance is actually as important, if not more important, than that of the center. The last thing people say about fiscal consolidation is, you know, we, we borrow only in rupees. We don't borrow and foreign currency, we are safe. That is not a safety indicator. It is true that the government borrowers only a small amount in foreign currency, but as an economy, we borrow and foreign currency. We have a current deficit, which means that lot of foreign money is coming and we need foreign capital. So to believe that the government borrowers in rupees, therefore we are safe, is also incorrect. You know, President Hoover,

17:57I think he said, bless their children because they shall inherit our debt. That's the case in India now, you know, we're passing on the burden of debt to future generations. Take seven minutes, okay. The second thing I want to, second is, I want to talk about his freebies. They talk about this in the Karnatana state. There's competitive populism over the last few years. We've seen this in 100 days, Telangana, Maharashtra, Delhi, Kanataka, most recently in Bihar, political parties competing with each other about freebies. We saw in Bihar most blatantly, you know, the stretched identity when the Margaret Bandhan said that they will give a job to every household. They'll give 30,000 rupees to every woman in the state. You know, people stop believing it, and they utilize each other. If every party offers it, you know, the political impact is minimized.

18:58The point is, I admit that in a poor society where millions struggle for daily existence, some freebies are necessary. You must provide some safety nets, but the spending that we do at the state level and at the central level on freebies, I think, is crossing limits, especially because this is not out of revenue surplus. This is borrowed money that is being given away. Again, as I said, it is a debt that we are passing on to our children. Instead of a surplus, we're passing on a burden of debt to the children. Ideally, a loan should repay itself. If you take a house loan or a loan to educate your daughter, the benefit of the loan repays itself. Your daughter gets educated, she earns, she can repair a debt, but if you borrow money only to give away freebies, that's unsustainable. Actually, it's off-bribing, and every political leader who says that I will give freebie,

20:06he actually says, I'm sorry, I cannot give you the dignity of a decent life regular livelihood and regular income, so I'm giving you this, please make do with it. The last thing, why do people vote for freebies? Like I said, they neutralize each other, but it could dig deep. Why are people getting enticed by this? It's very rational to do that. You know, when they lost confidence in politicians, the credibility of politicians is very low. It is rational for people to vote for freebie because it is something that I get today. I'm not going to get anything tomorrow. I might as well take what I'm getting today. The third issue I want to talk about is this divergence between rich states and the poor states. I would have said not south, but I just got corrected by Arvin, which is that it is best

21:06arms south versus in the heartland. They actually divide them into six categories. We actually, you know, do it in terms of north and south. You know, 30 years ago, I'm old enough to look back 30 years ago when we started the 1990s when the forms. The economist wrote an article saying that India is going to be divided into an east-west divide. The eastern part of the country, which is on the back of public investment, is now going to go down because India is opening up to markets. States, which have been always entrepreneurial in the west and in the south, are now going to benefit. And therefore, the east-west disparity will go up. India will divide across the east-west line. That did not actually happen. What we are seeing today is actually west and south versus the west of the country. And again, some cross-substitiation is necessary,

22:16can be supported, but the question is, are we reaching the limits of this? I was struck that last year, the chief minister of entrepreneurship urged this people to have more children. We told on earth that you must have more children. Here in Tamil Nadu, the chief minister of Stalin urged family people to have more children. I didn't think I would ever see that day because when I joined the service 50 years ago, no, everything, no matter what job you had, everything that we did was family plan, whatever you did. Even if you had a controller of weights and measures, you were in some sense doing family plan. I think was that you must encourage this is a national campaign. You must work on family planning. I didn't think I would ever see a day when the chief minister will tell his people how much children. And while they're doing that, the subtle message is actually not how much children, what they're actually messages that we're losing out. We're losing out our populations are growing much slowly. Population growth rates have

23:22come down. We're losing out. We're serving states. Their population growth rates are still high. Therefore, we must have our own children. And what's worrying and will become a big issue next year after the censor. They'll talk about in the book is that there is going to be revision delimitation of parliament constituencies whereby southern states or western states might lose disproportionately in terms of parliament seats. So what's good, what we're going to see is southern states, western states being asked to continue to cross subsidized border states and at the same time lose political thought. It's a double run. How are we going to manage that issue is going to be a big problem. So I've talked about three issues. Those of you who can't win know that I talked about

24:23about fiscal consolidation. I talked about disparity across states of freebies and I talked about division that divide across states. Now, very quickly in one minute, three questions I want to ask you are written on devish. First question, what explains the motive mystique? Is it just lucking out or has it done something that appeals to the vast majority of the waters that is getting elected 12 years in a row actually an unprecedented record? So what explains the motive mystique? The second question is what explains motive's humidity about economical forms? Yeah, you know, I've been wrote the wonderful articles in foreign affairs I think last year saying that more motive more inclined towards welfare is than structural reforms but going beyond

25:23that. Now, Modi as Prime Minister has had more political capital than any Prime Minister in India. Certainly any recent Prime Minister but probably any Prime Minister in India. Why what makes him so timid? Why is he not investing his politics capital in pushing reforms? And third, where is India's growth going to come from? Now, people are going to say that we are actually going at 8.2% I don't know if that is a structural shift or an 8% or whether it is a work but over the long term, we want to be 2047 a developed country and the people, you know, Professor Bhanumoti and others have done the numbers. They say we must grow at 8% consistently over the next 22 years. If we want to be a developed country by 2047, can we actually maintain 8% growth 22 years year on year? Over the last 35 years, India's clocked growth of 8% plus just three times and we never, ever been able to maintain that

26:31for more than two consecutive years. So, are we, is it possible for this country, for this economy to grow at 8% plus for the next 22 years for India to be a developed country? So, once again, my best wishes for the success of the book. Many congratulations, you're done a great job. Thank you. Thank you. And very important and pertinent questions. Please, please, please. So, my question is, what can we do now? What should we do to prevent our demographic dividend from turning into a demographic disaster? It's clearly not focused on early childhood nutrition education. We're not going to have people to make a developed country. And the second is, what have the World Bank and I have not had a role to play in any of the things that you described in the book where we have not done what we should have done? I mean, the questions that you asked us to why certain decisions were made were we influenced

27:35by the banks? Okay. So, now, we invite the authors for their brief responses. And then, I come in about, we talk about the ability workers on this. First, thank you so so much to both of you for your very thoughtful remarks. You know, asking the question about what explains the more the mystique is like asking the question, what explains the Trump mystique? I think to me a little bit, it's almost the opposite. Okay. But, but I think mystique, charisma, these are somewhat intedifiable characteristics of individuals, right? Because it's like, why are some,

28:41why do some film stars become big? Right? And it's hard to understand charisma, mystique, but let me offer you one explanation. Is sometimes you do well not because you are great, but because your opponents are so terrible. I don't have to be very good if my opponent is even worse, right? And I think at least part of the success is because the opposition, leaders in the opposition, how many inspire credibility in the public? I think one part of success and it's something that we did a little bit, you know, in a place like the US, in the West, in general, if you are single as a politician,

29:41it's a political liability. In the US, you can elect anyone, but if you're, even if you're gay, you will get elected, if you have a parkour. But if you are single, you are seen in developing countries, it's the opposite. Being single is a plus point because the assumption is you will not make money for your family. To the extent that most of our political parties are no different from family owned businesses. To that extent, I think being single, having weak opponents is not the full explanation, but might be part of the explanation. On the determinative part, I think the one spectacular failure set back the attempts at reforms, which was the one on Parvance.

30:48That was, I mean, when you look at the changes, many of them were actually had some reasonable basis and were positive, but agriculture is a state subject. If a center intrudes on state rights without due consultation, without building consensus, it should not be surprised if there's a backlash. And as you know, they were true and they got so worried about the political, negative political fallout that it really, my understanding is made them much more, it made going forward. And to some extent, I mean, I hate to say it, but we really need to thank President Trump for what he's done, because now you see certain actions, and as you know, people are realizing at the center that the world is getting to be a much tougher place. The global environment is

31:50deteriorating. Let me come back to your questions after all the nonsense. On the murder mistake, let me just add a couple of things for David said, I think firstly, thank you for wonderful comments, and maybe in future, Dr. Subhira, you know, maybe you should be presenting the book rather than, then as you know it better than we do. See, I think that remember the murder mistake has to be analyzed in real, over time. So you have to ask what was the origin of the murder mistake, and then what is the sustenance of the murder mistake, and these could potentially be two, you know, there could be different explanations. And on the origin of the murder mistake, I think that's kind of less surprising, because you know, at that point, you know, there was a sense that things were out of control, you know, corruption, all the whole thing. So I like to say that kind of there's a straight line

32:55from Bernard Mukherjee to the rise of the murder, because he mishandled the economy so much, and you know, that period generally, and that, I think to be fair, on the sustenance of the murder mistake, I don't just think it's, it's negative, you know, you've worked a work, I've worked so few with him, for all his faults, right? The sense that, you know, at least in the first term of his administration, the sense that he was a man actually committed to doing stuff, following up, you know, kind of engaged in this business of how much was optics, how much was, you know, actually reality. I can say there was a fair amount of substance to that as well. I mean, I, for example, you know, as you know, I'm not a, you know, I'm not a bug by any means as you know, but you know, it would be amazing. You would say, you know, a column meeting at 11 at night, and then the meeting would disperse and say, sub-mets, sub-chabadhyani ki li tayyaru,

33:59may Andhra Zakyazalga, haplok tayyaru hai ki li, you know, so, so that sense that he had this commitment to, you know, his, his project, and we can all debate about whether the project, what the elements of it, which are positive and which are negative, but I think there is that sense that, and also, remember, compared now, even to Trump today, fact, he, the concern for macroeconomics stability, which is always something that he embraced. He did believe in fiscal, you know, consolidation does believe in low inflation, which I can personally vouch for. So there was some objectively, I think, positive attributes also, which contributed at least to the substance, but I think over time, you can see that's fading partly. I think it's just stale-ness. I think the beauty about democracy is that, you know, the guys have to be thrown out, not even because they're incompetent, but they became, become stale and, you know, run out of ideas. That's what I used to say. So that's, I think, the Modi mistake. Now, what expense the timidity? So first,

35:04I think we have to note the fact that, you know, off-late, you know, the GST reform, the labor codes. I mean, there is some action, which, as Devesh rightly said, has been spurred by the crisis abroad. Except, let me offer two or three ideas about what, why he's been timid about political reform. One was somewhat told me early on before, and I think it's true, that in terms of his mindset and his conviction, he was always much better at implementation than at policy. This was always true about him, right? And therefore, the sense that, you know, how do I get things done and focus on that? He was very good at, but, you know, oh, that if you refine this or you need to maintain a stable environment or not a rule of law, all these are more alien concepts too. So that's kind of an instinctive thing about that. The second, of course, is the other side of his personality, which is, you know, demands loyalty and stuff. The price you pay is that you lose

36:10talent and expertise, and you get only, you know, freedom and loyalty over expertise, which you can see has been rising over time, which also means that, therefore, you know, it's a problem. The last thing I would say on the, on the timidity about political reform is one of the sad parts is that, and I give my personal experience in government that I had when I was there, that, you know, we were arguing about the urgency for reform, you know, especially the cleanup of the banking system, you know, in 2052 and 2016. And, you know, you are fiscal consolidation of whatever. Finally, the punchline would come back. Why all this urgency? We're growing it 7% in any case. So, so the fact of the growth numbers, you know, I believe they're highly overstated, but given that people felt the economy was growing, and this would come be thrown, I can say, what are you talking about? So what have we done to form? We'll still grow at 6% 7% 8%,

37:11and so the whole, you know, data quality, the deleterious effect it had on policy is, is, I think, another thing that should be, well, where is India's growth going to come from? Oh, can you believe it? Yeah. For investment, the claims are that, what do you have for more community, who value fairs teams, giving away interest, who are the, who are strong, who are welcome to day India and what are your core teams? And so, the former, I would like to talk about the financial uncertainty, but the same thing. Exactly, exactly. And then, you know, and then, see, Because then what the new welfareism did, and you can see that it's like Marx said religion is the opium of the masses. Now the welfare state means that there's a certain level of stability that you can take for granted and keep restiveness in check. So in some ways it's a masterstroke.

38:13You create the illusion that you're growing at 78% and you protect against the downside by having a welfare state, which then it's like a perfect combination. Now, where is India's growth going to come from? It's also something that I think I will tie into the demographic dividend. And then you can talk about the role of World Bank and IMF. I actually think that India is growing, not growing at these high rates at all. And because if you look at all the other indicators, private investment has been flat for such a long time. If India has been declining, consumption growth has been weak. So a series of indicators suggest that the economy is maybe not as robust as the headline numbers are indicating. No, I don't think we need a serious effort at reviving growth. Now, just to put it in the current context, people think there are two schools of thought broadly. One is the next phase of services. Services is going to be the engine of growth.

39:17Now, the problem with that is twofold, right? Even if a services-led model succeeded, it would provide growth and opportunities for one to two percent of the labor force. So if you did the PLFS, for example, the share of people doing these high-tech IT think is one to two. So by definition, it cannot be inclusive growth by definition. So therefore then, and also people forget, this is a thing. When we talk about artificial intelligence, it's actually a double value for India because it is replacing or threatening to replace exactly those kind of tasks which now we have comparative advantages, you know, code-cheap coding, you know, cheap back office stuff. And so that cannot be. I remain firmly of the view that, you know, I tell you what the problem with this is that, you know, we have to take one last stab at reviving manufacturing in India.

40:23And the China plus one opportunity was actually providing this until the Trump tariffs came. I hope the Trump tariffs can be, you know, addressed at least in the medium term, but we cannot give up on manufacturing at all just to illustrate that with numbers. China's share of low-scale global exports is about 45 to 50 percent. India's share is about 3 to 4 percent. India will never go to 20 percent global export market share, but there is no reason why, given what's happening recently, Foxconn coming in, Vietnamese investors coming in, data is doing so well, India's own manufacturing goes well, that we can't raise that from say 3 percent to 10 to 12 percent. That would itself provide a boost to inclusive growth. Even if today and going forward, a unit of manufacturing growth will not give you the same employment as in the past because of robots and things like that, because robots are now what AI is doing to services, robots is also doing to manufacturing.

41:33So that we can't escape, but it still offers us, you know, the hope of some hope of salvaging the inclusive growth, because unless we have inclusive growth, it can't be sustained growth. And it kind of speaks to Sarmaya's question that the demographic dividend, I don't know, we have to go all the human capital that Sarmaya quite rightly emphasized, unless we provide jobs for these people coming out of where the demographic dividend is especially high, like no, the Hindi heartland, unless we provide reasonably well paying formal sector jobs and create these employment opportunities. We will remain an economy which basically over 40 years has gone from informality to informality, it's just that the sector and the location of the informality has changed from manufacturing and rural to services and open, but we haven't quite provided mass well paying manufacturing jobs.

42:39So just to add, you know, the slight difference with our wind here that I don't think so, we should see services in manufacturing as either all, you know, if you are one sixth of humanity, you need every engine. And it can't be either all and even in services it is just one part construction tourism, for instance, I mean, you talked about Thailand, Thailand gets way more international tourists than India, why is that the case? And tourism is a very labor intensive sector. So I think we need to really think about that growth needs to come from a range of options rather than A or B. I mean, I think we have to think like that. You know, the point you raised about the demographic, the dividend becoming a demographic disaster. I mean, one of the puzzles we have in the book, which we ask is, you know, India has not been blessed with, say, great natural resources.

43:57How other than coal, no oil, there's no gas, there are no railroads. But the one thing the country has in excess clearly is people. That's why you're one sixth of humanity. And yet it is the one thing we have so similarly under invested since independence. There's absolutely no doubt that we have so severely. So even now, for instance, I also work on higher education, you'll always see minister talking about, look, how much our gross enrollment ratio has increased. Actually, India similarly over invests in higher education, India's gross enrollment ratio relative to its per capita income is a complete outline. The first countries that we know whether China, Korea, Taiwan, or Germany, etc. achieve those gross enrollment ratios at per capita incomes that were 3, 5, 10 times higher.

45:08So of course, the result is that we have still focused on quantity that we've totally forgotten anything about quality. So most higher education simply doesn't have the signaling value. The vast majority of the students, we are doing them a severe disservice because they're getting with the credentials, which raises expectations, but virtually no skills like for labor markets. And they will be unwilling to work in blue color jobs because they have a degree, but they simply do not have the skills, especially the way technology is sort of moving. You know, you asked the question, did the IMF and the World Bank play any role? One area that the bank clearly played a role was in the push on primary education. So during the 80s, and you might refer to remember, India's share in Ida began to come down because China had joined and India tried to protect its share and gradually the bank began to say, your Ida share lending will not continue if you don't agree to take for primary education.

46:32Then what happened was that the world conference on education was held I think in Bangkok, it might have been in the early 90s. And what that the report that came out prior to the conference showed that India had bifiled the largest number of illiterates in the world. And the fact is, unless we are shamed in the global context, that forced the bureaucracy and the political leadership to really think much more about primary education. So you see that was one sort of impetus that comes. It's very clear that primary education was one sector. The health has been much more because it's much more in the hands of the states and there the role has been much, much weaker. On the role of the World Bank and the IMF, it's actually interesting to be right about this in the book that the direct role spoken about the direct role of the IMF and the 91 crisis was also thing, but the indirect way it's been very influential is Dr. Subaru is an example of that, but there are many, many like that.

47:51So if you look at the theme of reformers in 1991 leading up to 1991, so many of them spent the time in the Bretton Woods institutions. And I would argue that the amazing thing about that team that there was a critical mass of people in the bureaucracy who had spent a lot of time, you know, Montaic, Alewalia, Shankar Acharya, Rakesh Mohan, Dr. Subaru, you know, Arvindville money, all of these. So in that sense, the exposure via their locating in the world back in the IMF, I mean, obviously all these reforms were homegrown, but one shouldn't neglect the broader indirect impact of many of those ideas and people that they made to the Indian reforms of 1991. I just want to end with one last thing. I think Dr. Subaru made a really very, very deep and nice point saying, asking why are people enticed by freebies, right?

48:55And you answer, I think, very compelling people say, look, we can't trust the government to give us the health education. Yeah, I've got to have a burden on it, but Dr. Subaru, I would just complete that by saying that that is also true from the side of the government and they also, I think, have given up or think that, you know, some of these things are too challenging like health and education. So it's also in a sense an abdication by them that are on an acceptance that so it's kind of a mutual equilibrium between those who know that the government can't provide, let's take the burden hand and the government in turn kind of fatalistically accepting that, you know, it won't be able to deliver. So it's kind of a happy equilibrium between citizens and government as it was happy. So the two parties. I think it's not happy. Can I just make one comment on education? I don't know much about education.

49:56I'm going to send them. So I was so far. No, no. I'm scared. The child. I did. Can she speak? And woman. They can't she. I'm a teacher. No, I never spoke before. Yes. For years. So. Our biggest challenge is caring. As you said, you're going to be schooled. You know, if I have a full energy. At the level of the morning, children must be schooled. I will ask to learn how to do for one of yourắc to teach you how to make music and learn how to make music and then a couple of tasks. It is done. So let me build relied. And representative. a Daddy day when. A day when we did that. And a mother. That was the ultimate.