ABSTRACT
The facts about aid and India’s economic performance since Independence, as we have shown, are fairly clear. But they are also counter-intuitive. Most ‘intelligent laymen’— even most economists not specializing in development-probably believe: (i) that aid to India has been large; (ii) that India’s growth performance has been bad; (iii) that this is partly due to substantial, and rather successful, policy emphasis on equity and poverty alleviation at the cost of growth; and (iv) that aid played a major role in both the growth outcome and the equity outcome.
