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Celtic connection
Bertie Ahern?s visit, the first by an Irish prime minister, is a notable event. India and Ireland have more in common than just sharing tri-coloured saffron, white and green national flags.
Bertie Ahern’s visit, the first by an Irish prime minister, is a notable event. India and Ireland have more in common than just sharing tri-coloured saffron, white and green national flags. Both were under the yoke of the same colonial power. Our founding fathers, Jawaharlal Nehru and Eamon de Valera, our litterateurs, Rabindranath Tagore and W.B. Yeats, knew and admired each other. Irish religious educators from orders like the Christian Brothers and Loreto Sisters, have played a sterling role in India.
Mr Ahern’s visit seeks to renew the engagement with shared aspirations for the future. And there is a lot the two countries have in common: both aspire to be knowledge-driven economies and educational superpowers. Admittedly, tiny Ireland is well ahead of India on both scores — it is the world’s largest software producer — even ahead of the US — as well as a world leader in nanometric chips and bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing. It is also attracting an increasing number of Indian students to its excellent educational institutions, and hopes to get more tourists, as well as Bollywood producers to take advantage of its natural charms.
There is a lot India can learn from the small and robust Irish economy whose per capita GDP is an astonishing 140 per cent that of the EU’s average, which, of course, includes that of its erstwhile colonial overlord. The key to Irish prosperity, besides the natural talent of its citizens, are its market-friendly policies. The Irish offer one of the most globalised markets with few barriers. Corporate tax rates are 12.5 per cent, far below the EU average of 30 per cent. At the same time, they have an extensive social welfare system. Ireland’s advantage has been its shift from lower productivity agriculture to higher productivity manufacturing only in the Eighties, much later than its EU partners or the US. This has implications for India which, too, seeks to shift its huge workforce from marginal farming to manufacturing in the coming decades, and seeks to do so with minimal social disruption.
