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TINA, India and Economic Liberalisation
Although India has been "reforming" since 1991, almost nobody seems to be satisfied with either the progress or the outcome. The reformers need to put the economy's long-term interests above financial sector short-termism and reorganise the domestic financial system to keep credit productive. The debate on whether a bank should lend existing money or newly create the money it lends has major implications for monetary and fiscal policies, as well as for financial sector reforms.
TINA is an acronym for the term “there is no alternative.” It was famously used by Margaret Thatcher when she wrote in the Daily Telegraph on 22 May 1980:
There’s no easy popularity in what we are proposing, but it is fundamentally sound. Yet I believe people accept there is no real alternative.
Although Tina is used as a synonym for such terms as “neo-liberalism,” “globalisation” and “financialisation,” its best synonym appears to be the term “imperialism” defined as a relation between Centre nations and Periphery nations. The Centre nations have power over the Periphery nations so as to bring about a condition of “disharmony of interest” between them (Galtung 1971); by disharmony Galtung means conflict. Why TINA is synonymous with imperialism will become evident in the later sections of this article.
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