An Agenda for India's Growth


Book Description

P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister of Government of India; contributed articles.




Getting India Back on Track


Book Description

India has fallen far and fast from the runaway growth rates it enjoyed in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In order to reverse this trend, New Delhi must seriously reflect on its policy choices across a wide range of issue areas. Getting India Back on Track broadly coincides with the 2014 Indian elections to spur a public debate about the program that the next government should pursue in order to return the country to a path of high growth. It convenes some of India's most accomplished analysts to recommend policies in every major sector of the Indian economy. Taken together, these seventeen focused and concise memoranda offer policymakers and the general public alike a clear blueprint for India's future. Contents Foreword Ratan N. Tata (Chairman, Tata Trusts) Introduction Ashley J. Tellis and Reece Trevor (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) 1. Maintaining Macroeconomic Stability Ila Patnaik (National Institute of Public Finance and Policy) 2. Dismantling the Welfare State Surjit Bhalla (Oxus Investments) 3. Revamping Agriculture and the Public Distribution System Ashok Gulati (Commission for Agriculture Costs and Prices) 4. Revisiting Manufacturing Policy Rajiv Kumar (Centre for Policy Research) 5. Generating Employment Omkar Goswami (Corporate and Economic Research Group) 6. Expanding Education and Skills Laveesh Bhandari (Indicus Analytics) 7. Confronting Health Challenges A. K. Shiva Kumar (National Advisory Council) 8. Accelerating Infrastructure Modernization Rajiv Lall and Ritu Anand (IDFC Limited) 9. Managing Urbanization Somik Lall and Tara Vishwanath (World Bank) 10. Renovating Land Management Barun S. Mitra (Liberty Institute) and Madhumita D. Mitra (consultant) 11. Addressing Water Management Tushaar Shah (International Water Management Institute) and Shilp Verma (independent researcher) 12. Reforming Energy Policy and Pricing Sunjoy Joshi (Observer Research Foundation) 13. Managing the Environment Ligia Noronha (Energy and Resources Institute) 14. Strengthening Rule of Law Devesh Kapur (University of Pennsylvania) and Milan Vaishnav (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) 15. Correcting the Administrative Deficit Bibek Debroy (Centre for Policy Research) 16. Building Advanced Technology Capacity for Competitive Arms Acquisition Ravinder Pal Singh (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) 17. Rejuvenating Foreign Policy C. Raja Mohan (Observer Research Foundation and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace




Our Time Has Come


Book Description

Long plagued by poverty, India's recent economic growth has vaulted it into the ranks of the world's emerging powers, but what kind of power it wants to be remains a mystery. Our Time Has Come explains why India behaves the way it does, and the role it is likely to play globally as its prominence grows.




Cities and Public Policy


Book Description

The twenty-first century will witness a rapid urban expansion in the developing world. India, it is believed, will be at the forefront of such a phenomenon. This book acknowledges the role of agglomeration externalities as the cornerstone of urban public policy in India. Arguing that hypotheses of over-urbanization and urban bias theory—which articulated a negative view of urbanization—are based on fragile theoretical as well as empirical foundations, this book calls for proactive public policy to harness planned urbanization as resource. India requires agglomeration-augmenting, congestion-mitigating, and resource-generating cities as engines of economic growth, including rural development. The book provides a large number of practical examples from India and abroad to enable policy-makers undertake reforms in urban and regional planning, financing, and governance to meet the challenges of urbanization in India. It combines theory and practice to draw lessons for an urban agenda for India and recognizes the central role of cities in catalysing growth and generating public finance for economic development.




Why Growth Matters


Book Description

In its history since Independence, India has seen widely different economic experiments: from Jawharlal Nehru's pragmatism to the rigid state socialism of Indira Gandhi to the brisk liberalization of the 1990s. So which strategy best addresses India's, and by extension the world's, greatest moral challenge: lifting a great number of extremely poor people out of poverty? Bhagwati and Panagariya argue forcefully that only one strategy will help the poor to any significant effect: economic growth, led by markets overseen and encouraged by liberal state policies. Their radical message has huge consequences for economists, development NGOs and anti-poverty campaigners worldwide. There are vital lessons here not only for Southeast Asia, but for Africa, Eastern Europe, and anyone who cares that the effort to eradicate poverty is more than just good intentions. If you want it to work, you need growth. With all that implies.




The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Economy


Book Description

India's remarkable economic growth in recent years has made it one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This Oxford Handbook reflects India's growing economic importance on the world stage, and features research on core topics by leading scholars to understand the Indian economic miracle and the obstacles India faces in transforming itself into a modern 21st-century economy.




The Growth Report


Book Description

The result of two years work by 19 experienced policymakers and two Nobel prize-winning economists, 'The Growth Report' is the most complete analysis to date of the ingredients which, if used in the right country-specific recipe, can deliver growth and help lift populations out of poverty.




Transforming Food Systems for a Rising India


Book Description

This open access book examines the interactions between India’s economic development, agricultural production, and nutrition through the lens of a “Food Systems Approach (FSA).” The Indian growth story is a paradoxical one. Despite economic progress over the past two decades, regional inequality, food insecurity and malnutrition problems persist. Simultaneously, recent trends in obesity along with micro-nutrient deficiency portend to a future public health crisis. This book explores various challenges and opportunities to achieve a nutrition-secure future through diversified production systems, improved health and hygiene environment and greater individual capability to access a balanced diet contributing to an increase in overall productivity. The authors bring together the latest data and scientific evidence from the country to map out the current state of food systems and nutrition outcomes. They place India within the context of other developing country experiences and highlight India’s status as an outlier in terms of the persistence of high levels of stunting while following global trends in obesity. This book discusses the policy and institutional interventions needed for promoting a nutrition-sensitive food system and the multi-sectoral strategies needed for simultaneously addressing the triple burden of malnutrition in India.




India Transformed


Book Description

In this commemorative volume, India's top business leaders and economic luminaries come together to provide a balanced picture of the consequences of the country’s economic reforms, which were initiated in 1991. What were the reforms? What were they intended for? How have they affected the overall functioning of the economy? With contributions from Mukesh Ambani, Narayana Murthy, Sunil Mittal, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Shivshankar Menon, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, T.N. Ninan, Sanjaya Baru, Naushad Forbes, Omkar Goswami and R. Gopalakrishnan, India Transformed delves deep into the life of an economically liberalized India through the eyes of the people who helped transform it.




The Billionaire Raj


Book Description

A colorful and revealing portrait of the rise of India’s new billionaire class in a radically unequal society India is the world’s largest democracy, with more than one billion people and an economy expanding faster than China’s. But the rewards of this growth have been far from evenly shared, and the country’s top 1% now own nearly 60% of its wealth. In megacities like Mumbai, where half the population live in slums, the extraordinary riches of India’s new dynasties echo the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers of America's Gilded Age, funneling profits from huge conglomerates into lifestyles of conspicuous consumption. James Crabtree’s The Billionaire Raj takes readers on a personal journey to meet these reclusive billionaires, fugitive tycoons, and shadowy political power brokers. From the sky terrace of the world’s most expensive home to impoverished villages and mass political rallies, Crabtree dramatizes the battle between crony capitalists and economic reformers, revealing a tense struggle between equality and privilege playing out against a combustible backdrop of aspiration, class, and caste. The Billionaire Raj is a vivid account of a divided society on the cusp of transformation—and a struggle that will shape not just India’s future, but the world’s.