Empowering India's villages

Tarun Khanna puts a strong argument forward that India must do something similar to what happened in China in the late 70 and early 80s - bring villages up and get them to share in "India Shining". If that doesn't happens then India will never be able to catch and India's farmer will not be able to improve their lot. The following is an excerpt from the article

So India should take a page from China’s book and fix its villages, but not by trying to do it China’s way. China’s strong government forced the rapid dissemination of the Anhui experiment. India’s weak state cannot accomplish anything remotely comparable. Rather, India should play to its private-sector strengths. Corporations need a seat at the table of village reform. India’s vibrant indigenous entrepreneurial class – unlike China’s counterpart, largely decimated by the socialist experiment and the Cultural Revolution – must be courted. Reliance Fresh is an indigenous example in India. Even multinationals should be welcomed, the task is so enormous. Metro Cash and Carry is an example, and joint ventures between indigenous entrepreneurs like Bharti Enterprises and multinationals like Wal-Mart can complete the private-investment picture. A modern agricultural supply chain linking the village tomato farmer to his urban market could reduce waste by 25 percent and end-user prices by 21 percent.

Only then will the 70 percent living in villages begin to share in India, allegedly “rising” today.