India after two decades of economic reforms...
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The writer of a leading daily has presented an interesting perspective. According to him, there are two ways of looking at India's two decade performance. The most popular way, as we all know, is looking at the key economic indicators. The numbers look quite upbeat on that front. India's economy has been growing at an average rate of about 7-8%. This is quite superior to the 5-6% growth recorded in the two decades preceding 1991. Even at a time when the developed world is desperately trying to wriggle its way out of the economic turmoil and the debt crisis, India has maintained its position as the second fastest growing economy. There has been a laudable increase in exports and investment rates. Moreover, we have witnessed the rise of Indian enterprises as global entities during this very period.
Let's look at the other side of the coin as well. During these past two decades, the rich-poor gap has intensified, poverty still remains high, and employment generation has grown at a paltry rate. Here are the numbers- the Gini coefficient, which measures income inequality across households, has gone up from 25.8 in 1993-94 to 28.8 in 2009-10 in rural areas and from 31.9 in 1993.94 to 38.3 in 2009-10 in urban areas. The number of absolute poor in India has declined only marginally from 404.9 m in 1993-94 to 397 m in 2009-10. What is even more perplexing is that the average rate of employment generation during this period has been a meagre 1.3% per annum. This is significantly lower than the rate of population growth or the rate of growth of working age population. In fact, during the last five years the rate of employment growth has been the lowest at 0.2% per annum.
These numbers point to the grim fact that India's growth has been extremely skewed. We seriously need some important reforms to facilitate higher employment generation and to reduce the income disparities. What we fear is that important reforms similar to the ones enacted in 1991 will be put off until we again find ourselves in a situation when things go out of control. As they rightly say, history repeats itself. Or will it not? Time will tell.
According to you, who has benefitted most from India's economic reforms of 1991? Share your comments with us or post your views on our Facebook page.
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To combat firm international fuel prices and slide of rupee against dollar, petrol prices have been raised to the extent of Rs 3 at the end user level. The adhoc price increase may to an extent reduce under recovery losses for state oil retailers and subsidy burden for companies like Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). However, such piecemeal measures are just crude shocks to consumers and no substitute to clear pricing and subsidy sharing formulae for the sector. The lack of definite policies has led to too many casualties, the delay of ONGC FPO being the latest.
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While profitability in India continues to be relatively higher than in the West, companies that are almost debt free enjoy significant free cash flows. Ones that do not have very capital intensive businesses do well by distributing dividends to shareholders, especially when the possibilities of lower growth rates and margin pressures in the near term have kept investor sentiments pessimistic.
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04:45 | Today's investing mantra |
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15 Responses to "India after two decades of economic reforms..."
B H Upadhyay
Sep 18, 2011The rise in rate of rise of GDP (from "HINDU" rate to international rate) has certainly gave more opportunities to those who were in advantageous position. Those who were and are certainly have to struggle more and the law of demand and supply has certainly gave good opportunities to them too. I can say for sure that the un employment in the sates like Gujarat, Maharashtra, TN, NCR has reduced substantially but for other states it can be told for sure.
Certainly, percolation to downward is time taking also problem lies with the education (that is not having education) and poverty. Infra structure projects are at the bottom. These can generate lot of employment. We must take them on priority for sustaining the rate og growth as well as generating employment for un skilled / skilled labourers.
Rakesh
Sep 18, 2011The benefit goes to Reliance, Robert Wadera, Sonia Gandhi and her congress party leader, Bureaucrats and other industralist
D.V. Deshmukh
Sep 18, 2011Good piece of information. Increasing rich-poor gap will have serious social implications and coupled with large scale corruption there is fear of ugly social unrest which can affect day to day life of a common man.
h s goel
Sep 17, 2011re unemployment in india to my mind the reason are
1 1 lore of politicins the honey ed salary allowances free accomodation which they may rent no stopagge of pay for being absent from duty subsides food
2 allces if youeven do not have work
3allces for school childern drawn by their mums but used by their their fathers
why should we seek employment remains qqq
P.V.Ranganathan
Sep 17, 2011The politicians, the bureaucrats and the industrialists are the people who have benefited, the former categories illegitimately
S K VERMA
Sep 17, 2011Economic reforms.... Our corrupt leaders, buerocrats and of course some industrialist are only obeying World Bank, IMF and US and western countries and nothing else.
They are cheating our nation check list see below,
Destroying agriculture land
killing our own small industries
See if agri land will not be available what these cheat leaders & IAS lobby will eat, currency notes ?
jagdish sanghvi
Sep 17, 2011On Inflation and rate increases---- If we were to believe Asad Dossani(this week's Asad's article appeared under "Daily Reconing"), RBI's efforts will not be very fruitful, until the Babus and the Politicians get their act together.
Jitendra Amin
Sep 16, 2011Self centered loud speaking masses have taken undue advantage in a much larger scale since 1991. This is a very bitter reality. All classes of our indrustrialists and bussuiness persons have exploited every situation without ethics and sense of social trustiship. Poor and unorganised masses are suffering extreemly much.
Jitendra Amin.
Anurag
Sep 19, 2011We may have benefited from economic development, but look at the growing gap between the haves and the have nots, we are staring at a Social Unrest in the making with this divide.
We may have gained Material growth, but in the process are loosing our Value system and Culture to the Western culture, for which the coming generations in our country will end up paying a huge price. Do you really think the economic progress we made is worth what we have lost and what we are loosing. Sorry but I don't think so.
The Credit driven growth which is the premise of the developed world has brought them on the verge of Defaulting, and it is only the Saving's culture which has prevented countries like India to still keep growing. But with the current generation adopting the Credit culture, we will soon end up the same route with both the Household and Government being Deficit Spending Units and no Surplus Spending Units !!