Guest Editor’s Introduction: India’s Economy: Growth, Governance, and Reform

Abstract

This introduction provides the context for, summarizes, and connects the articles in the special issue.

Notes

1. See Jishnu Das, Quy Toan Do, Karen Shaines, and Sowmya Srinivasan, “US and Them: The Geography of Academic Research,” Journal of Development Economics 105 (2013): 112–30.

2. At the risk of offending those left out, one can mention Vijay Joshi and Ian Little, India’s Economic Reforms, 1991–2001 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996); Pranab Bardhan, Political Economy of Development in India, Expanded Edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Arvind Panagariya, India: The Emerging Giant (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Arvind Subramanian, India’s Turn: Understanding the Economic Transformation (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009); Jean Drèze, and Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013); Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2014). There are also books by political scientists, historians, sociologists and management experts, as well as journalists, each with its own take on India’s reality and aspirations.

3. Again, a selective list includes Anne O. Krueger, ed. Economic Policy Reforms and the Indian Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Anne O. Krueger and Sajjid Chinoy, eds., Reforming India’s External, Financial, and Fiscal Policies (Studies in International Economics & Development) (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003); Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, eds., Reforms and Economic Transformation in India (Studies in Indian Economic Policies) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Nicholas C. Hope, Anjini Kochar, Roger Noll, and T. N. Srinivasan, eds., Economic Reform in India: Challenges, Prospects, and Lessons (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

4. The most comprehensive and innovative approach to well-being that has been operationalized is, to my knowledge, that of John Helliwell, Richard Layard and Jeffrey Sachs, eds., World Happiness Report (New York: United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2013). Unlike the Human Development Index, the measure of life satisfaction it develops is through direct surveys, and it does not directly incorporate GDP or even capabilities such as levels of education and health.

5. Inclusiveness can refer to income classes, ethnic or religious groups, regions, or gender, among the most significant possibilities for classifying social strata in any economy.

6. Some of the more contentious debates behind different answers to this question—as illustrated by some of the volumes referenced in footnotes 2 and 3—have tended to conflate disagreements about objectives and instruments, or about ends and means, making it more difficult to reach consensus. See Nirvikar Singh “The Great Rights Debate,” 2013, http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/the-great-rights-debate/1151998/0 (accessed January 8, 2015); Nirvikar Singh, “Can India Grow Faster Again?,” 2013, http://archive.financialexpress.com/news/can-india-grow-faster-again-/1156918/0 (accessed January 8, 2015); Nirvikar Singh, “How Can Indians Be Happier?,” 2013, http://ideasforindia.in/article.aspx?article_id=210 (accessed January 8, 2015).

7. See Nirvikar Singh, “Democracy, Diversity, and Development: India’s Strategy and Outcomes,” Chapter 7 in Achieving Development Success: Strategies and Lessons from the Developing World, ed. A. K. Fosu (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013).

8. See also Nirvikar Singh, “Some Economic Consequences of India’s Institutions of Governance: A Conceptual Framework,” India Review 3, no. 2 (2003): 114–46; M. Govinda Rao and Nirvikar Singh, Political Economy of Federalism in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005).

9. This issue has, of course, been analyzed previously in works such as Donald Wittman, “Why Democracies Produce Efficient Results,” Journal of Political Economy 97, no. 6 (1989): 1395–424; Timothy Besley and Stephen Coate, “An Economic Model of Representative Democracy,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 1 (1997): 85–114; Timothy Besley, “Political Selection,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 3 (2005): 43–60. The work of Richard Musgrave, James Buchanan and Mancur Olson referenced by M. Govinda Rao in his paper in this volume is also clearly connected to these concerns. See also Rao and Singh (2005) for additional discussion in the context of Indian governance and federalism.

10. Interestingly, while the authors do not emphasize this, the national government has also tried to encroach on states’ responsibilities in education and health, with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and National Rural Health Mission.

11. The challenges with respect to the precise nature of how manufacturing prowess will translate into superior growth in employment and output in the twenty-first century global economy, something brought out in Chandra’s paper, are highlighted more broadly in Nirvikar Singh, “Promoting Profit-making,” Financial Express, 2014, http://archive.financialexpress.com/news/columns-promoting-profitmaking/1302699/0 (accessed October 29, 2014).

12. Similarly, in a detailed study of information technology (IT) use in Indian manufacturing, Shubhashis Gangopadhyay, Manisha G. Singh, and Nirvikar Singh, Waiting to Connect: Indian IT Revolution Bypasses The Domestic Industry (New Delhi: Lexis-Nexis-Butterworth, 2008), the authors found that IT use increased overall productivity as well as employment of both unskilled and skilled workers.

13. As in the case of financial sector reform, this massive intellectual effort was initiated under the previous government, illustrating some consistency of overall thinking about the economy that transcends political differences.

14. On structural change and growth in India, see also Orcan Cortuk and Nirvikar Singh, “Structural Change and Growth in India”, Economics Letters 110, no. 3 (2011): 178–81; Orcan Cortuk and Nirvikar Singh, “Analyzing the Structural Change and Growth Relationship in India: State-level Evidence,” Economic and Political Weekly (2015, forthcoming).