Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Foreword by Deepak Nayyar
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 What is this ‘New’ India? An Introduction
- Chapter 2 New Interpretations of India's Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century
- Chapter 3 Continuity and Change: Notes on Agriculture in ‘New India’
- Chapter 4 An Uneasy Coexistence: The New and the Old in Indian Industry and Services
- Chapter 5 Is the New India Bypassing Women? Gendered Implications of India's Growth
- Chapter 6 The ‘New’ Non-Residents of India: A Short History of the NRI
- Chapter 7 Revivalism, Modernism and Internationalism: Finding the Old in the New India
- Chapter 8 Creative Tensions: Contemporary Fine Art in the ‘New’ India
- List of Contributors
- Index
Chapter 2 - New Interpretations of India's Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Foreword by Deepak Nayyar
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 What is this ‘New’ India? An Introduction
- Chapter 2 New Interpretations of India's Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century
- Chapter 3 Continuity and Change: Notes on Agriculture in ‘New India’
- Chapter 4 An Uneasy Coexistence: The New and the Old in Indian Industry and Services
- Chapter 5 Is the New India Bypassing Women? Gendered Implications of India's Growth
- Chapter 6 The ‘New’ Non-Residents of India: A Short History of the NRI
- Chapter 7 Revivalism, Modernism and Internationalism: Finding the Old in the New India
- Chapter 8 Creative Tensions: Contemporary Fine Art in the ‘New’ India
- List of Contributors
- Index
Summary
Introduction
At independence, there was significant expectation about India's economic performance, both among its own population and externally. This expectation of strong economic performance in the post-independence period was largely disappointing. After an initial period of rapid growth just after independence, the Indian economy went into a protracted period of slow growth in per capita income from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. Growth in per capita incomes during this period was less than 1 percent a year, less than most other comparable economies of the developing world (Bhagwati 1993). India's standard of living fell behind that of many countries such as China and South Korea, when in fact, at independence, India's standard of living had exceeded that of those countries. In the last two decades of the twentieth century there was a perceptible break from the economic stagnation of the previous decades and the Indian economy grew at rates that far exceeded the average growth rate in the first few decades after independence.
What was particularly new about India's economic growth in the last two decades of the twentieth century? How was it different from earlier growth episodes both in the colonial and post-colonial periods? A revisionist view has argued that India's growth in recent decades is not particularly distinctive as compared to average Indian economic growth since independence or with growth rates of other comparable countries or regions (De Long 2003; Nayyar 2006).
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- A New India?Critical Reflections in the Long Twentieth Century, pp. 23 - 42Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2010
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