After the Robber Barons
Is corruption the flip side of rapid economic growth? History appears to answer this provocative question with a heretical yes.
The exemplary instance is the Gilded Age in the United States, the era of the robber barons. It was a period of rapid growth, rampant corruption, rising wealth and income inequality.
Recently, Ashutosh Varshney, a political science professor at Brown University, has drawn the striking comparison between that age and contemporary India, which too features dizzyingly rapid growth, a new class of superrich entrepreneurs, a clutch of crooked politicians and a seemingly unceasing carousel of corruption scandals.
Historical analogy is tricky, but it is certainly true that India today broadly resembles the earlier American experience, both in the rapidity of economic growth and the structural transformation from an agrarian to a modern economy, and the accumulation of staggering fortunes, often through illicit means, with the attendant widening gaps between rich and poor.… Seguir leyendo »