#150 One Country, Infinite Variety

Hey all, our little newsletter hits a 150 with this edition! That&#8217;s about 600,000+ words. We also completed two years of bringing you Anticipating The Unintended last month. The process has been rewarding for us (heh, what else can we say about a free newsletter, really?). We hope it&#8217;s been of use to you. Thank you for your attention and time. We will be grateful to hear from you.<br/><br/>India Policy Watch #1: Two Indias&#160;<br/><br/>Insights on burning policy issues in India<br/><br/>&#8212; RSJ<br/><br/>In the old debate between growth versus equality, we have consistently batted for growth in the Indian context. Like <a href="https://publicpolicy.substack.com/p/52-trade-surplus-truth-deficit">we have written earlier</a> (&#8220;What Drives Rapid Economic Growth&#8221;), economic growth is a moral imperative for policymaking in India. Other things, like equality, climate impact or anything else, are important but if you have to make the trade-offs like it is inevitable in policymaking, you should accord a higher priority to growth over them. This doesn&#8217;t endear us to many. How can you not think of carbon emissions, sustainability or the planet for future generations, they ask? Our point remains simple. You need to prioritise when you have limited resources and a thin state capacity. There are millions of great causes to serve in this world but the state cannot be expected to solve all of them. Falling for such demands that are more appropriate for an economy more advanced than India will distract us from our core objective - lifting millions of Indians out of poverty. And trust us, if you don&#8217;t do this, you won&#8217;t achieve any of the other exalted goals too. In the three decades since the reforms of 1991, we have achieved more on this objective than the previous four. Maybe in the process, we have got a few more billionaires in India. It shouldn&#8217;t matter so long as competition is free and individual liberty is sacrosanct.&#160;Those should be the only limiting conditions fo