Bye bye, Nanny state: Good opinion piece from The Telegraph on the IIM fee dustup:

A few decades ago, the middle class was regarded as one of the catchment areas of socialist populism. The so-called progressive politicians of yesteryear like Indira Gandhi and Jyoti Basu, used the politics of envy to nurture societies built on inefficiencies, mediocrity and deprivation. That economic model ran out of steam by the mid-Seventies, although it was another three decades before it was formally junked. Today, India’s middle classes are impatient for change. They detect opportunities and want to demolish the numerous roadblocks of the past. The mood is fiercely euphoric. The middle class has broken emotionally with the third world mentality.

Actually, while I agree about the generally upbeat atmosphere (whether based on sound fundamentals or not), the nanny state is far from rolling over. Urban India, remember, is just 30% of India’s population, and only a small fraction of that 30% live in cities that get any benefit at all from the new ‘knowledge economy.’ In India’s tier 2 cities, and its numerous villages, there is enough teeth in the old license-permit raj (think grain procurement, think fertilizer subsidies, think untaxed electricity for irrigation) to last generations to come.