The Ledger
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Kotasthane: India's Lower-Level Government Employees Are Among the World's Highest Paid
“At the lower levels of government beyond apart from the IAS, et cetera, the salaries that people in government get, that is some of the highest in the world.”
Kotasthane: Demonetization's Unintended Consequences Could Have Been Anticipated
“Like demonetization happened, right? There were a lot of unintended consequences, but many of those unintended consequences could have been anticipated.”
Kotasthane: India's Union Government Workforce Is Half the Size of America's
“If you normalize India's government to U S population to India, Indian federal union government is one half that of the U S right.”
Kotasthane: Running state enterprises depletes India's capacity for essential public services
“If you are going to take them and get them to run PSUs, they'll obviously not be able to spend energy time thinking on healthcare, education, judiciary, where we have a big problem, law and order in general. So all the developmental arms of the Indian state ar…”
Kotasthane: How Income Tiers Dictate Elections, Public Discourse, and Policy Actions
“So at the lowest income level, right, they have disproportionate influence on who gets elected. Okay. At the middle in income strata, they have disproportionate influence on what gets discussed, right? Because you and I, the people who are doing podcasts, read…”
Kotasthane: 1950s Bombay Alcohol Prohibition Created the Mumbai Mafia
“The only way you will get access to it is someone has to do this in an illegal way. And that's how the origin of a lot of the underworld mafia came into being.”
Kotasthane: Punjab's Subsoil Water Act Caused Concentrated Burning and Delhi's Smog
“So once that happened, once you start doing that if you start Sowing your crop in June, July by when the harvesting season comes, that is also delayed and you have very little time between the harvesting season and the next cropping season. So once you have a …”
Kotasthane: Young Firms Drive Job Creation in India, Not Small Firms
“So the initial fear was if you introduce capital into this, the employment will reduce, but the learning was actually that, you know, young firms create employment. Not small firms. So the, once you de-reserve many young firms came, many firms came, and then t…”
Kotasthane: Public Policy Has Become a Partisan Spectator Sport
“Now I think public policy has become a spectator sport, just like politics, right? We already have chosen our favorite government or our favorite political party, and then we are trying to rationalize whatever governments are doing on that basis.”
Kotasthane: India operates as an 'omni-absent' state that neglects core public duties
“So we have a term for this in this book called Omni absent, right? We call the state as In the sense that state is doing what it shouldn't be doing, but it is not doing what it should be doing”
Kotasthane: India's progress requires strengthening state governments and narrowing union scope
“So if you want India to jump to the next level, if you want India to progress. You need strengthening of the states, of the union, of the local governments, and then for the union governments to do what it should be doing, which is defense, external affairs, e…”
Kotasthane: Indian government must fix core law and order before expanding spending
“So the real thing we need is we want the 25%, which is currently the spend to be spent on areas where the government should be spending. That's the first step. So get governments to improve our law and order, right? That's police system is broken. Our judiciar…”
Kotasthane: Alcohol Prohibition in India Fails and Wastes State Capacity
“Many states have had prohibition. The learning from that has been that it doesn't work. It leads to all these kinds of problems. You need your state capacity, which is limited. It goes into policing for the thing that you need to prevent people from drinking a…”
Kotasthane: High rents prevent early-stage startups from setting up in Mumbai
“No startup can literally think of having a great office in the initial period. And that's how Mumbai lost out.”
Kotasthane: Mysore Sandal Soap Relies on Sandalwood Oil Imported From Australia
“The Mysore sandal soap, which you use Most of that sandalwood oil, which is used to make is not grown in India anymore. It comes from Australia now.”
Kotasthane: Indian Policymakers Will Not Touch Agricultural Reforms for Years
“And the big thing is now no one is under touch agricultural reforms for some time, even though you need that. Very centrally to change Indian economy structure, but now with, because of the breakdown of trust, it becomes difficult.”
Kotasthane: Indian governments run more than 1,500 public sector companies
“Today, government still run more than 1500 companies, including sandal soap and things like that, right?”
Kotasthane: Governments Adopt Pre-Existing Committee Ideas During Crises, Not Novel Ones
“Finally, when, you know, crisis happens, it's not as if governments come up with a new idea when the crisis happens. What happens is they'll pick up an idea, which is already there. Two, three committees have said, and that they'll pick one of those when say a…”
Kotasthane: India's 'Collector' Titles Stem From Colonial British Revenue Extraction
“The idea came from the colonial state. So the idea was that colonial state was not so interested in the development of those people. So it was okay. You are extract revenue and when you extract revenue, a lot of corruption also used to happen. So to minimize t…”
Kotasthane: India overloaded colonial bureaucratic structures without building state capacity
“The interesting paradox was that the administrative arm was still colonial in nature because the structure was still that way, but we added more demands from the state. So the state became more coercive, and we spread the state too thin, trying to do everythin…”
Kotasthane: China is operationally far more fiscally decentralized than India
“Another surprising stat, for example, people often think China is a very centralized country, but actually it is extremely decentralized In operation. So a large percentage of their government spending happens at local levels. Our government is exactly opposit…”
Kotasthane: India's Sandalwood Output Plunged From 4,000 to 600 Tons
“By 1965, India was producing close to 4000 tons of sandalwood by 3040 years later that had dropped from some 4000 to a meager 600 or so.”
Kotasthane: Taiwan's semiconductor dominance stems from 1950s liberal trade policy
“So a lot of East Asian countries did understand that they had, for example, Taiwan, et cetera, had a very liberal trade policies from the 19 fifties, which people don't see when they analyze Taiwan. They say, Oh, today it has become powerhouse on semiconductor…”