Growth minus development
Widening gender gap, rising malnutrition and hunger call for policy intervention.
The World Bank says the poverty rate in India is 21.2 per cent.
In rapid-fire, the country was recently hit by three global rankings. The first was the ease of doing business and India improved its global rank, according to the Brettenwoods experts. Now this is happiness. As an economist I believe the turnaround to the higher growth path will come if we do a bit of pump priming and then private investment will be sucked in. While some sarkari economists agree with me, this is still not the dominant view. So improving the ease of doing business is obviously good news. Of the three rankings this was the only one the chambers of commerce and corporate honchos went ga ga over. The Purchasing Managers’ Index improved. This was somewhat effervescent, since even in the past an improved PMI has always not led to better outcomes, but the sentiment was understandable.
