<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Urbanise quickly, MM urges India
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Clarissa Oon
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->INDIA needs to stop romanticising its villages and urbanise quickly if it wants its economy to catch up with China's, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday.
He was asked to compare infrastructure and talent development in Asia's two most populous nations during a dialogue with some 700 businessmen from the Indian diaspora in Singapore for a conference.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>Straight Talk
'I'm not being diplomatic. If I want to be diplomatic, I'll make you happy, you'll hear nice words and you will leave with the wrong impression of what you should do.'
MM Lee, after being asked for his thoughts on liberal democracy
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>One of them, Mr S.R. Ravi, a Kuala Lumpur-based managing director of an engineering firm, asked MM Lee what he thought of India's economic prospects.
Mr Lee recommended that he read the text of a lecture given by Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, on how the country's opposition parties have mobilised farmers into stonewalling urbanisation efforts.
'They claimed the village is the ideal way of life,' said the MM, adding that he felt that Mr Chidambaram's analysis 'goes to the nub of the problem'.
India is still predominantly rural, with close to two-thirds of its population engaged in subsistence rather than commercial agriculture.
With such vast numbers of rural poor, Mr Lee believes India has 'tremendous untapped potential' despite being the world's second-fastest growing economy, after China.
In comparison, China has 10 million people moving from villages to the cities every year, and 'if you visit China every year, as I do, you see the infrastructure growing apace'. Two in five Chinese now live in urban areas.
He recalled visiting Mumbai over a year ago and being asked how the Indian city could develop into a financial centre like Singapore.
The problem, as he saw it: Its airport was not up to scratch and the road to the airport was 'deplorable, full of rickshaws and squatters'.
Earlier at the same conference, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong cited an estimate which said that China's infrastructure development was 2.5 times faster than India's.
For example, a new high-speed train from the capital Beijing to the neighbouring industrial city of Tianjin has reduced a two-hour journey to just half an hour.
Mr Lee also felt that India is shackled by its federal system in which state governments like that in Maharashtra control cities like Mumbai, unlike in China, where major cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin now report directly to the national capital Beijing.
Such comparisons between India and China may be 'undiplomatic', but Singapore 'speaks as a friend', MM Lee told his largely Indian audience.
'I see India making about 60 per cent of the progress of China. Every year, the gap will widen.' Yes, India's economy will continue to grow whatever happens to the global economy, 'but you are missing your chances', he argued.
Mr Chidambaram had laid down a challenge for his country to host the Olympics in 30 years' time and on the same scale as China, but 'if you ask me, I say it's not possible', said MM Lee. India has outdone China in one area though: producing outstanding individuals who run some of the world's major corporations, such as Pepsico's president and chief financial officer Indira Noyi. Unfortunately such talents 'are all not in India. Something in India is constraining them', said Mr Lee.
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><!-- Author --><TR><TD class="padlrt8 georgia11 darkgrey bold" colSpan=2>By Clarissa Oon
</TD></TR><!-- show image if available --></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->INDIA needs to stop romanticising its villages and urbanise quickly if it wants its economy to catch up with China's, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said yesterday.
He was asked to compare infrastructure and talent development in Asia's two most populous nations during a dialogue with some 700 businessmen from the Indian diaspora in Singapore for a conference.
<TABLE width=200 align=left valign="top"><TBODY><TR><TD class=padr8><!-- Vodcast --><!-- Background Story --><STYLE type=text/css> #related .quote {background-color:#E7F7FF; padding:8px;margin:0px 0px 5px 0px;} #related .quote .headline {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:10px;font-weight:bold; border-bottom:3px double #007BFF; color:#036; text-transform:uppercase; padding-bottom:5px;} #related .quote .text {font-size:11px;color:#036;padding:5px 0px;} </STYLE>Straight Talk
'I'm not being diplomatic. If I want to be diplomatic, I'll make you happy, you'll hear nice words and you will leave with the wrong impression of what you should do.'
MM Lee, after being asked for his thoughts on liberal democracy
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>One of them, Mr S.R. Ravi, a Kuala Lumpur-based managing director of an engineering firm, asked MM Lee what he thought of India's economic prospects.
Mr Lee recommended that he read the text of a lecture given by Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, on how the country's opposition parties have mobilised farmers into stonewalling urbanisation efforts.
'They claimed the village is the ideal way of life,' said the MM, adding that he felt that Mr Chidambaram's analysis 'goes to the nub of the problem'.
India is still predominantly rural, with close to two-thirds of its population engaged in subsistence rather than commercial agriculture.
With such vast numbers of rural poor, Mr Lee believes India has 'tremendous untapped potential' despite being the world's second-fastest growing economy, after China.
In comparison, China has 10 million people moving from villages to the cities every year, and 'if you visit China every year, as I do, you see the infrastructure growing apace'. Two in five Chinese now live in urban areas.
He recalled visiting Mumbai over a year ago and being asked how the Indian city could develop into a financial centre like Singapore.
The problem, as he saw it: Its airport was not up to scratch and the road to the airport was 'deplorable, full of rickshaws and squatters'.
Earlier at the same conference, Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong cited an estimate which said that China's infrastructure development was 2.5 times faster than India's.
For example, a new high-speed train from the capital Beijing to the neighbouring industrial city of Tianjin has reduced a two-hour journey to just half an hour.
Mr Lee also felt that India is shackled by its federal system in which state governments like that in Maharashtra control cities like Mumbai, unlike in China, where major cities such as Shanghai and Tianjin now report directly to the national capital Beijing.
Such comparisons between India and China may be 'undiplomatic', but Singapore 'speaks as a friend', MM Lee told his largely Indian audience.
'I see India making about 60 per cent of the progress of China. Every year, the gap will widen.' Yes, India's economy will continue to grow whatever happens to the global economy, 'but you are missing your chances', he argued.
Mr Chidambaram had laid down a challenge for his country to host the Olympics in 30 years' time and on the same scale as China, but 'if you ask me, I say it's not possible', said MM Lee. India has outdone China in one area though: producing outstanding individuals who run some of the world's major corporations, such as Pepsico's president and chief financial officer Indira Noyi. Unfortunately such talents 'are all not in India. Something in India is constraining them', said Mr Lee.
