Suppose the elite- the guys with power in a country who recognize each other as having power and who start to act cohesively- dedicate themselves to 'value creation' will their country succeed or fail? Casas and Cozzi developed the annual Elite Quality Index (EQx), which purports to measure and rank the value that national elites create for a country, in the belief that this will tell us something about which development states will prove viable and which will fail. Sadly, they are as stupid as shit. It is obvious that a country can have a super-smart elite dedicated to 'value creation' and still fail. Ghani was of the International development elite. He was an expert in 'failed states'. Then his state failed. There are purely geographical reasons why Afghanistan is always going to have problems. By contrast, a country may be ruled by inbred cretins and still do very well. Thus the Casas & Cozzi index is useless, if not mischievous. In their recent paper they quote Kaushik Basu- who, after Sen's death, will hold the title of the most useless Economist in the world. He says
Whether one likes it or not, elites play a big role in a nation’s success or failure.
Leadership matters because the choices that leaders make can have dramatic consequences. But, even if the elite produces leaders, those leaders may take diametrically opposed positions. Indeed, 'product differentiation' within the 'monopolistic competition' that characterizes elite activity. Thus, members of an elite tend to cancel each other out as noise. Thus, over all, elites play no role. They are too small and have to spend most of their time treading water to stay in the elite pool. The economic condition of a nation depends on what the non-elite do. If the masses are doing value-creation, well and good. But, the population may prefer to do stupid shit. Elites can preside over either outcome. It is a different matter, that a bunch of gangsters could enslave the population and make it economically productive or a threat to its neighbors. But gangsters may have no 'elite' characteristics whatsoever and may spend a lot of time killing each other.
India's Civil Service was certainly elite. But it could preside over either increasing poverty or increasing prosperity. True, if it faced invasion or bankruptcy, it might do sensible things and this was also the case if the threat of a beating or the promise of a bribe helped matters along.
What was true of India was also true of other polities- e.g. France- where competitive exams had created a cohesive elite. But that elite could fuck up like nobody's business. The Chinese mandarin class may have had very refined literary tastes but they held China back.
England may be said to have had a Public School elite. But if you had money you could buy yourself as many Oxbridge educated barristers and Eton educated Cabinet Ministers as you liked. Post-War America, with its Military-Industrial complex, could be said to have had a 'power elite'. But Vietnam was its graveyard.
They can promote all-round well-being;
so can sending good thoughts into the Universe
but they can also be exploitative, stalling the nation’s overall progress.
as can gangsters or Trade Unions or gangsters who run Trade Unions
The newly created Elite Quality Index (EQx), under the academic leadership of the University of St.Gallen, is an exciting experiment in
junk social science
scoring and ranking the quality of elites in different nations.
on the basis of ignorance and prejudice
This work can potentially play a role in helping nations reform their leadership, thereby contributing to overall social welfare.”
No it can't. Voters don't bother with this shite.
In the case of India, which saw no change in elite composition during COVID, Casas and Cozzi nevertheless find a change in 'value creation'-
The EQx2022 offers quite contrasting results for Indian elites compared to the EQx2021.
Which proves the index is useless. It is not 'robust'.
India still belongs to the category of middle-quality elites even though the country’s overall ranking has improved by 21 places (rank # 97), and its overall score by 2.5 points.
Even though nothing had changed. It's just that these two ignorant nutters decided to give it higher marks for an arbitrary reason.
The Political and Economic Power exerted by elites (rank # 73 and # 22, respectively) is far in excess of their performance in terms of Political and Economic Value (rank # 100 and # 137, respectively). The results therefore suggest that value extraction remains central to the core functioning of Indian elites that are mainly driven by a lack of desire to create value.
Meaningless jibber-jabber. If you are doing 'value extraction' you want to maximize value creation in the sector vulnerable to extraction- viz. the organized sector. But the reform process has stalled in India.
On the bright side, the success in the COVID-19 vaccination rate (VAX, iii.7, rank # 61) attests to an excellent pharmaceutical business elite typified by the Serum Institute of India (SII) and Bharat Biotech, which fully vaccinated 60% of the Indian population in less than a year.
It attests to India's economies of scope and scale in this area and to past I.P legislation re. generic medicines. There was no change in the quality of the management. An opportunity arose and one particular entrepreneur rose best to the challenge.
This incredible achievement, given the size of the population, allowed the COVID-19 fatality rate, age-adjusted (COF, iii.7, rank # 68) and COVID-19 mortality rate, age-adjusted (COM, iii.7, rank # 63) to drop faster than expected. These companies also exported jabs to poorer countries. Unfortunately, SII did not go all the way in its efforts to vaccinate Africa, a move that would have helped defeat the world pandemic.
Nonsense! Delivery systems were the bottleneck. In any case, the real story here is about herd immunity.
In December 2021, it unexpectedly decided to halve production for financial reasons. As was the case with Big Pharma companies in the West, unregulated monopolies prioritized their private profits over wider social benefits. The Indian government could have gained a more prominent world leadership role in combatting the pandemic by putting more pressure on SII to replicate India’s vaccination miracle in Africa.
It looked like that would have been a waste of money.
Unfortunately, they decided not to leverage India’s excellent Political globalization (PGL, i.1, rank # 18) to challenge China on the African continent.
Because that's an even more foolish index. Africans know China has a lot of money. India is Mr. Nice Guy but it has its own problems.
India is the world’s biggest democracy and should become more aware of its potentially unlimited international influence.
It shouldn't listen to its own voters. It should listen to these two shitheads.
Following months of riots by farmers, three laws deregulating agricultural markets were repealed in January 2021 because they excessively favored extractive elites.
No. The laws threatened the politically influential arthiyas or middle-men. Anyway, the legislation was merely permissive. States will have to subsidize their own farmers as the PDS diversifies purchasing.
This attempt to liberalize the agricultural market could have succeeded if elites had been more inclusive and guaranteed a price floor for small farmer crops.
No. That would have made no difference. The farmers got what they wanted- viz. higher prices now and a the psychological sense of victory. Then, the bania Kejriwal won Punjab by a landslide. The farmers had just fucked themselves in the ass.
Instead, this failure illustrated that overly extractive elites can cause harm to themselves.
This is a stupider sentence than any even a JNU Professor could write. There was no extractive elite involved. Modi was showing that he was the only person who could do reform but that he was smart enough to back down if challenged. This made him seem sensitive and responsive to the masses because he himself comes from a very poor family. His own treasure is his Mummy. Indians know these lines from the film Deewar
Amitabh Bachchan: "Aaj mere paas building hai, property hai, bank balance hai, bangla hai, gaadi hai..kya hai kya hai tumhare pass?" (today I have wealth and power. What do you have?)
Shashi Kapoor: "Mere paas maa hai." ( I have mother!)
Suppose, instead of Salim/Javed, Cassas/Cozzi had written the dialogue. Then it would be
Bacchan- 'Today I have extractive elite power! I'm creating value for myself like crazy! What do you have?'
Shashi Kapoor- Your elite power is overly extractive! Our Mummy is crying her eyes out due to decline in India's Elite Quality index! Mend your ways, bro!
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