The Good, Bad and the Ugly of Economics!

Good Governance = Good Economics
This was the title of the discussion on NDTV. The who's who of the Indian Economy for a lay man i.e., the most written about people -Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Mr. Rangarajan  were present.
From a Economic illiterate point of view the "show" had the following agenda:
To raise a debate between the NDA and UPA government policies and to provide an open platform for those who can defend their "strategy" and in all this prove a point that "Corporate Growth is Country Growth".
Quite an intelligent strategy I would say. Appear as though you are media and lobby for the people who get you the money "the corporate"
This is just a glimpse of the state of our media today. I definitely understand one of the basic tenets is to be self sustainable but unfortunately the media is engaged in just that today.
Coming back to where we started. Does good governance only mean good economics, is an increased GDP is all that shows the well being of a country? This topic has been in discussion since decades now. While some countries like ours try to emulate the "developed" nations in terms of money, in a parallel world countries like Bhutan focus on other metrics like the Gross Happiness Index.
Whatever metric we might chose to follow somehow our idea of developed seem to hover around just the G8 nations and The United States of America in particular. It is funny how just 8 nations fit into our list of "prosperity" among the 196 odd nations of the world. So the bottom line is 188 nations trying to be these 8 nations, is it?  Somehow even among the developed counties we do not want to be Canada or the Scandinavian countries with better social security. USA it is, USA it has to be.
The economist went on to discuss how the magical number known as the growth rate has the solutions to all the problems that the country is facing today. Mr. Rangarajan went on to say how the growth is being restricted by "other" problems, referring to the opposition against kadanukulam nuclear plant and coal reserves which are under the forest cover today. According to him the civil society is not letting the progress happen. "We have spent so much on the nuclear power plant but we now do not know if it will be operational. We have the one of largest coal reserves but they are under forest cover.", he says. He goes on to say that " We need to find a solution to not disturb the ecology and harness the resources". Some how by the end of his speech I started wondering which corporation he was representing. His entire idea of development seem to be more and more industries, more power.
And I fail to understand how we could harness the coal reserves without disturbing the forest may be we can pull the forest out take the coal and put it back, may be such a technology has been developed. What about the loss of ecological balance? What about the loss of livelihood and habitat for tribal people? Probably all that is collateral damage. "So what if some tribal people in some corner loose their home. We will be a developed nation"
Just to remind, we already have less than the required amount of forest cover. "So how does it matter, we can show some records, after all it is a mandatory not that a loss of a few thousand hectares would be noticeable". " So what if we add a few more species to the extinct list. We will be a developed nation". There are a few others who are linking the natural disasters to the careless way we deal with our ecology. The answer is still the same "So what if the intensity of natural disasters is slightly increased. So what if a larger pie of people are affected. So what if the effects are disastrous. We will be a developed nation"
Coming to the nuclear power, some how the hazards of it don't seem to find any consideration. All the people who are opposing are easily tagged as "Anti Development".  World over, in the most technologically advanced countries nuclear power has been quite disastrous. "So what, if a few million people have health hazards, a few thousands born with deformities, some instances of mutation. We will be a developed nation."
The single point agenda of the development is sell the country to the corporate, market forces will take care. "So what if the poor become poorer, if the living conditions worsen. We will be a developed nation".
We are already half way sold on this theory. Try to list the problems of India as a country and inevitably the top reasons would be top problems of the corporate. Sooner we might just be called India Pvt Ltd.
If we go futuristic and imagine a situation when even a few of the developing countries become developed i.e., succeed in emulating The USA. Today one USA consumes 20% of the world energy.Two or three USA's will devour the earth in no time. "The world definitely will not be enough"