So I'm teaching in India at Genovi University, and I did my PhD and other education from Delhi University. My area of interest, my PhD, was on India-European Union relations. Recently I came here to Boston, Howard Medical School. It was an IG conference, and my paper was on development, globalization, and environment: the 21st century dilemma.
I see. And I've been reading your books, and now Professor Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs. I met Professor Bhagwati, Jagdish Bhagwati, in Columbia University. Singh was not there, and other people I could not meet. And I'm lucky that I met you.
Okay. So your article on democracy, is democracy working? I actually organized a national conference in India just on the challenges of democracy, how things are, is it really working.
So I would like to... everything is there on the net and in your books, but still, from your mouth, since I'm here, it would be a great thing for my students when I go back home that I met Fukuyama. So from your mouth, do you think democracy is working?
Well, you know, I don't think you can answer that simply because it's working very well in some places and it's working very poorly in others. I mean, I think that, you know, if you want to speak about India, you know, in many respects it's working quite well because if you think about how India is ethnically and religiously and geographically and all sorts of ways such a complex, you know, divided country, the fact that it holds together at all, you know, is quite remarkable. And it's been quite stable really since independence, with a couple of, you know, couple of exceptions. But basically, you know, in that sense it's been working extremely well. On the other hand, it does seem to me that India has some real problems in decision making, you know, that...
You see this especially in something like infrastructure, where there's a big, you know, need for airports, water, electricity, investments, and all these things. And, you know, here's where the comparison, I think, with China, you know, makes India not look so good because, you know, there's been a real deficit in this. And I think it's largely, you know, in a certain way it's the political system, that, you know, the political system in India just has a large problem in coming to big decisions, you know, to do...
And also in the implementation part of it, and a lot to do with the education system over there.
Yeah, and the legal system also, it gets very, you know, there's a lot of legal challenges and, you know, complexity that... So, you know, in that sense, India, it's not that it's not working, but it could be working a lot better than it is working.
So it could be. Yeah. If you compare it with America, how do you think the democratic system over here is, much better or...
Well, in certain ways, it is. I think that, you know, there's a level of just routine corruption in India that doesn't exist in the United States. I think that in the United States we've created this new form of corruption in terms of lobbyists and, you know, K Street interest groups and this sort of thing, which is a little bit, you know, different, but it's also, I think, debilitating, you know, in many respects. And, you know, American society is highly polarized in many ways that, you know, has also become quite dysfunctional. So it depends. I mean, you know, in some areas there's some comparability. You know, so I think in both countries, I think we both have a problem in getting the system to produce fundamental decisions, you know, that are needed. But on the other hand, you know, they're both free countries and there's...
Naturally, yes. And about the fact that whatever you have written, 'The End of History and the Last Man' and 'The End of Ideology', do you think the liberal capitalist democratic system is actually the thing that should be and is the most beneficial for mankind?
Well, I think, you know, there are different versions of it, but I don't think that in the long run I see an alternative that in the long run is going to work better. You know, it's going to be some form of authoritarian, you know, regime, and I think all of them had big problems as well. And so the question is, you know, compared to what, is it, you know, is it the best system? But I do think that, you know, there's a lot of democracies that aren't working very well, and...
There's a lot of scope for improvement, and changes are needed, because democracy has also become authoritarian. Because the political parties and whichever party comes to power and the ministers, they become kind of rulers, dictators. Before the elections they have a different way of talking and doing things and promising to people, and after elections everything changes, the scenario changes.
And about inequalities, I have been here to the US. I landed here on the 24th, and people say the US is a land of opportunities, and I'm finding so many poor people around, many beggars, especially at the downtowns of New York, Washington, and wherever I go, even Boston.
What's the kind of inequality? Is it really what Professor Stiglitz is saying, that there's 0.01% of people having a wage of $97,000 a month?
