Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
This means that corruption and what may be called political “rents” (i.e. profits
due to the special powers of the group) are prevalent and limit any economic
success. The problem is thus not just one of inward-looking development, but
also the chance this gives for mismanagement by particular social groups. A
social factor must be added into the economic mix.
All this criticism refers to past performance; from 1991, India has begun to
adopt more open policies, and to eliminate the damaging licensing system, as
well as to attract foreign investment rather than prohibit or restrain it (Rohwer
1996). Thus there is new investment by Western countries, and by East Asian
neighbours such as Singapore, into the region of Bangalore where the electronics
industry is in rapid expansion. India's huge domestic market provides an instant
base for changing its dismal past record into future success.
The Soviet Union and Russia
Although commonly excluded from discussion of developmental matters, or
treated as a separate entity corresponding to different ground-rules and control
systems, the Soviet lands do provide useful support to the theses advanced in
respect of poorer countries generally, the concentration of development, and the
problems imposed by large territories. The ex-USSR also provides evidence on
another score, the relative success of a command economy, versus the market
economies or regulated market economies of the West. This case does not
represent a parallel to the east Asian economies, nor to the other, less successful
LDCS. It is a case
sui generis,
but one that has features in common with other
world regions. It has also been focused on in the past because of the specific and
repeated claims of the Soviet leaders that communism would eliminate
inequalities between different groups and regions within the Union. These
claims, and some features of its development, are shared with mainland China in
the period from the 1949 communist takeover to the present.
By 1990, on the eve of disintegration, the USSR was composed of 15 Union
republics, dominated by Russia with a population of 140 million, 57 per cent of
the total, and 75 per cent of the land mass. This land area, of 22.3 million km
2
,
was the largest effective political unit in the world, larger than the whole of
North America including Canada, the USA and Mexico.
Rather than a single country, the USSR might be classified as an empire: first
a Russian empire constructed from the late fifteenth century onwards, with the
absorption of first the Volga tribal groups, then the Ukraine (seventeenth
century), the Caucasus states in the early nineteenth century, and Central Asia
mostly in the period from 1862-80. In Siberia there were no organized states to
defeat, and after exploration reached the Pacific by 1689, colonization was gradual
through the nineteenth century.
This vast land was an empire in cultural terms because of its ethnic diversity,
but a single country in terms of forming a single territorial unit, compared with
the west European overseas empires reaching to distant overseas colonies.
