: Punjab, Economics and the World #WorldNEWSAll What is our aspiration for Punjab? It is every citizen’s responsibility to keep track of Punjab’s balance-sheet. A piece of news that I read recently

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Punjab, Economics and the World #WorldNEWSAll
What is our aspiration for Punjab? It is every citizen’s responsibility to keep track of Punjab’s balance-sheet.
A piece of news that I read recently about Taiwan, itself a world leader in semiconductor manufacturing, deciding to invest in a Lithuanian manufacturer, and another news about Norway’s sovereign wealth fund’s exposure to some of the Adani Group companies prompted me to write this over the weekend.
Often, my mind brings up some striking parallels and contrasts between Punjab and with different parts of the world and our states. We are, after all, all humans – and yet, I find it important to ponder over how some societies have managed to progress better compared to others.
This does not mean that other parts of the world do not have problems of their own but at least the advanced economies are not still solving the same ones they had 75 years ago.
One measure of a society’s progress is the variety, complexity, and types of organisations they create, and how well they collaborate with one-another at a large scale for solving their own problems first, and then attempting to contribute something unique and useful to the wider world.
What should have been:
What is our aspiration for Punjab? As a minimum, we would want most infrastructure, goods, and services requirements for Punjab to be fulfilled by companies owned, operated, staffed, and tax-resident in Punjab.
If Punjab was once a major wheat producer, has it now progressed to more value added products that could use its past strength in agriculture? Say, world-class baked goods corporations selling their products domestically within Punjab, while also bringing in revenues from exports?
Windmills are an iconic figure of the Dutch landscape and were a primary form of flood control in the past.
In the same period since Punjab’s partition in 1947, The Netherlands, with a similar land area and population as Punjab, rose from the ashes of the Second World War to became the second largest food producer in the world, and a major innovation hub of agricultural technology.
A healthy domestic industry does NOT preclude benefitting from a healthy mix of foreign capital, labour, and talent where needed, in the same way that English, Swiss, Scottish, Dutch, Scandinavian, or other advanced economies have benefitted from these, according to their local needs.
But the core of Punjab’s infrastructure and industry needed to have grown organically, from the ground up, owned by local stakeholders, paying local corporation taxes within Punjab, with demonstrable attachment to Punjab’s past and a stake in its future “Skin in the game”, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb puts it.

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