Author: Kaushik Basu
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 319
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195670094
Description
India's economy over the last decade looks in many ways like a success story; after a major economic crisis in 1991, followed by bold reform measures, the economy has experienced a rapid economic growth rate, more foreign investment, and a boom in the information technology sector. Yet many in the country still suffer from crushing poverty, and social and political unrest remains a problem. These essays by leading academics, policymakers, and industrialists examine India's recent economic successes and their social and cultural context.
India's rate of economic growth after the 1991 reforms were instituted reached a remarkable 7 per cent for three consecutive years, from 1994 to 1997. Several contributors to the volume ask what this means for the nation as a whole. In his essay Democracy and Secularism in India, Amartya Sen argues that economic progress is not the only way to measure a nation's performance. Other contributors examine the actual effect India's economic growth has had on reducing poverty and recommend policies to empower the poor. The essays also address such issues as globalization and the vulnerabilities and opportunities it creates, India's experience with monetary and fiscal reform, the rapid growth of the information technology sector (including a case study of India's software industry by N R Narayana Murthy), and India's grassroots economy.
This book is important for all those interested in the current state of the Indian economy. It will be relevant resource for journalists, development scholars, policy-makers, researchers, and India watchers.
REVIEWS
India's Emerging Economy is a valuable collection of articles on India's economic performance in the 1990s. This is essential reading for the development scholar; indeed I would recommend it to anyone with a serious interest in contemporary India.
-Debraj Ray, New York University
This assessment of reforms in the Indian economy is notable not just for the unusually impressive collection of top academics, entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, and NGO representatives whose views are assembled here. The section on the IT sector provides insights on the most dynamic part of the economy. At the same time, it includes broader issues concerning the social and political fabric within which the Indian economy function, such as inequality, allocation of public goods, social norms, the informal economy, democracy, and governance.
-Dilip Mookherjee, Boston University
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Introduction
The Indian Economy: Up to 1991 and since
Political Economy of India
Democracy and Secularism in India
Disjunctures in the Indian Reform Process: Some Reflections
Monetary and Fiscal Reforms
Monetary and Financial Sector Reforms in India: A Practitioner's Perspective
Some Macroeconomics of India's Reform Experience
State-Level Fiscal Reforms in India
Poverty and Public Goods
Policies for Pro-Poor Growth in India
Who Is Getting the Public Goods in India? Some Evidence and Some Speculation
Technology and Takeoff
The Impact of Economic Reforms on Industry in India: a Case Study of the Software Industry
Information Technology and India's Economic Development
Grassroots and the Globe
India's Informal Economy: Facing the Twenty-First Century
Globalization and Economic Reform as Seen from the Ground: Sewa's Experience in India
Index