Prof. Huang, who co-authored the definitive paper “Can India overtake China”, was here to deliver lectures on “Policy framework and development strategies: India and China”.
Regarding India, Prof. Huang said that the need of the hour is to develop a comprehensive education framework particularly in the primary education. Huang, a trenchant critic of the development model followed by China, mentioned that the low quality FDI reflects inherent weakness in the economy and that the growth preceded huge investments in infrastructure in 1990s. China has high financial inefficiency & a weak stock exchange. Most of the big companies are heavily backed by the state & thus the private sector and the entrepreneurship have been largely ignored.
Speaking on the subject of political environment, he opined that the democratic government of India scores over its Chinese counterpart on the issues of transparency and accountability. Government system in China can take some quick decisions but at the same time its bad decisions can prove detrimental to the country’s growth & people due to the lack of feedback mechanism.
Making a point on the sustainable growth of India, he quoted “India is achieving 8% growth with 50% of China’s investments and 10% of its FDI. To me this is a picture of more sustainable growth.”
On the management education front, Prof. Kothari mentioned about the ongoing talks between MIT and SJMSOM on the possible linkages in the near future. He later delivered a lecture on “What happened at Enron?” followed by an interactive session with the student community.