Para além do conselho do António Amaral, outra leitura importante para evitar alguns “espantos” de Cavaco Silva na Índia teria sido este capítulo do Index of Economic Freedom, publicado há um ano atrás:
Grassroots Capitalism Thrives in India de Barun S. Mitra [pdf]
Ingenuity, a spirit of enterprise and innovation, has helped most Indians, particularly those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, survive strangulating economic policies. Being a pluralistic democracy has actually helped to moderate some of these economic policies, allowing people to bend oppressive regulations. Reinforcing the pluralist democracy is a free press. Notwithstanding the ideological fervor of the intelligentsia and the rhetoric of the political class, there is a point beyond which the government cannot impose rigid economic regulations. Where such regulations are indeed laid down, there is a point beyond which enforcement agencies cannot implement the laws on the ground. That is the way it has always been. While the dominant political party adopted the doctrine of a “socialistic pattern of development” in the mid-1950s and sought to implement Soviet-style five-year plans, a large part of the Indian economy continued to function virtually outside the scope of the law. Today, 15 years after economic liberalization, experts estimate that 30 percent–40 percent of the Indian economy continues to be in the informal sector. This informal economy reflects India’s true economic potential. (…)
This brief survey provides a glimpse of the culture of entrepreneurship that prevails in India. If these grassroots capitalist entrepreneurs were freed from the shackles of bureaucratic economic regulations, they could well take India to the top of the development ladder. It would not be too farfetched to suggest that there is hardly any country in the world today where informal-sector economic activity is as diverse and as widespread as it is in India. This activity is an unrealized potential just waiting to be harnessed.
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