> Business Standard
> Saturday, May 21, 2005
> How tourism transformed Morocco
> AL FRESCO
> Sunil Sethi/New Delhi May 21, 2005
>
> At the national level slow and muddled policies also hit tourism. Despite
> its eagerness to lure foreign investment, and riding an unprecedented boom
> in the property market, India is afraid to allow foreigners to buy a home.
Well, Morocco has been the beneficiary of huge remittances from Moroccans living in the EU (especially France), as well as extensive funding from the European Investment Bank. But what works for a highly urbanized country (57%) of 32 million at the periphery of the EU isn't helpful for a hugely diverse country of 1 billion people, where most of the population still lives in rural areas. I don't know enough about India to say anything meaningful about the place, but isn't India in dire need of an agrarian revolution and a developmental state?
-- DRR