ABSTRACT
Most current assessments of India’s economic performance regard it to be weak, poor, and unimpressive, whether considered in its own terms or against the stated national targets, and especially when it is compared to the economies of the other regions in Asia. Many consider it to be disappointing. Bhagwati (1993: 17-25) calls it not only inadequate but also dismal, while Dhar (in Lucas and Papanek, 1988: 3-21) refers to India’s “low-growth syndrome.” In the late 1970s and 1980s, a whole literature developed on India’s economic stagnation and industrial retrogression (Nayyar, 1994; Jha, 1980). So impressed (or depressed) was economist Raj Krishna (1988) by the long-term constancy of the “on any reckoning . . . unsatisfactory” average annual growth rate of 3.5%—believing it to be largely immune to changes in investment and policy-that he characterized it as the “Hindu rate of growth,” implying some element of predestination in it. India’s economic performance seems especially egregious when viewed against the population growth rate of 2% or more.
