THE SCREAMS BEGIN most mornings at 9am. Elderly men and women in a Delhi park hold their arms in the air and shriek, then laugh. After years of observing the pensioners from his office window, your correspondent one day joins them. “Open your lungs,” the team leader instructs. “Laughter is good exercise for the internal organs, the lungs, the heart.” A woman as old as independent India (it turns 68 in August) explains: “We are not young in age, so we get stiff and need to uncurl the body.”
India needs to clear its own internal blockages. In the language of laughter, it has tended to respond with discreet giggles: a series of incremental changes. Its economy did enjoy a boom in the early years of this century, with high investment and rapid growth, in spite of decades of over-regulation, state domination of many sectors, including banks, and a lingering scepticism about markets. But now it needs to uncurl the economic body properly with much bolder reforms. Many had hoped Mr Modi would set these in motion, but so far he has done little, even though his whopping mandate would allow him to push through any...
from The Economist: Special report http://ift.tt/1FzJU5U
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