India’s Economic Growth: Lessons for the Emerging Economies

Abstract

During the last two decades, India’s name has figured prominently amongst the list of emerging economies. After decades of slow growth, India entered into a new phase of economic reconstruction during the mid-1980s and the 1990s. In comparison to a measly 1 per cent growth rate in the years following independence from the British Raj in 1947, Indian GDP per capita growth rate reached 1.5 per cent in the 1980s, still not quite up to the benchmark but not dismal either. The picture drastically changed in the 1990s, when the growth rate of GDP per capita reached an average of 5 per cent, much beyond the benchmark and a small miracle on its own.