India's Decade of Development

We believe that India has a chance for a tremendous breakthrough in economic development during the current decade. India’s political system is more than ever in consensus about the basic direction of reforms. The current government enjoys a strong electoral mandate. A decade of opening of the economy has produced new dynamism, most dramatically in the Information Technology sector, but in others as well. The world is waking up to India’s crucial role as the largest democracy and as a dynamic economy, if still a low-income one on average. The new technologies (especially information technology and biotechnology) give new opportunities for economic and social development. We suggest that India should set major national goals of development. These goals will help to galvanize domestic public opinion in support of the objectives of development, provide a gauge against which to judge the progress of policies, and help the world community to appreciate the efforts underway, and support them through increased flows of foreign investment. To make the first decade of the 21st Century a true Decade of Development will require a broad-based program of economic and social actions. We highlight ten crucial initiatives in this regard.India’s development, India’s economic reforms, Information Technology

Marine Middle Eocene Otoliths from India and Java

Otoliths collected from the Harudi Formation (Lutetian) of Kachchh, Western India and from the Nanggulan Formation (Early Bartonian) of Nanggulan, Java, revealed the presence of respectively 15 and 24 teleost taxa. Seven new species are introduced: "genus Brotulinarum" siremboides, Apogon townsendoides, "genus Apogonidarum" altissimus, Lactarius nonfungus, "genus Menidarum" occultus, "genus Percoideorum" pseudatherina and "genus Percoideorum" sciaenoides. Both associations reveal very shallow neritic environments. They are compared with a previously described neritic Middle Eocene otolith association from central Western Pakistan, and a combined list of all (43) taxa represented in the three associations is provided. Considering the restricted sampling, the number (8) of taxa occuring at more than one locality is remarkable, and one can probably conclude that we sampled several of the most common and widespread teleosts inhabiting the neritic environments of the Indo-West-Pacific region during the Middle Eocene. Biogeographic evaluation of the available data leads to the conclusion that in the Eocene, the Indo-West-Pacific region was already inhabited by many fish taxa not represented elsewhere, and that probably it contained the most diverse fish community of the world, as it does today

The Progress of Policy Reform and Variations in Performance at the Sub-National Level in India

The reform process in India has so far mainly concentrated at the central level. India has yet to free up its state governments sufficiently so that they can add much greater dynamism to the reforms. Greater decentralization of decision making from the center to the states will lead to greater competition among the states and therefore to higher efficiency and productivity in these regions. Policy making at the sub-national level is essential in order for the state governments to be able to follow development strategies suitable to their socio-economic, cultural, and geographic characteristics. Coastal states, for example, can follow a more focused export-led growth strategy, or states with a large pool of trained manpower, such as IT professionals in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka can lay more emphasis on IT and service sector. A few of the Indian States have been more reform-oriented, such as Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, but states, such as Haryana, Kerala, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and West Bengal have a lot to catch-up with. Of course, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are even further behind. We analyze the state-level situation in fifteen major states based on the progress of state-level policy reform. Accordingly, we have divided these states into three categories of reformers. These are the reform-oriented states, intermediate reformers and the lagging reformers. We then examine the performance of these states in terms of SDP growth, foreign direct investment, industrial investment proposals, and software exports among other variables. Real annual average growth rates of per capita gross state domestic product bear testimony to the fact that our group of reform-oriented states are the fastest growing states in India in the post-reform period. Also, these states have performed better in attracting both domestic and foreign investment, software exports, and in the areas of primary health and education

The Decade of Development: Goal Setting and Policy Challenges in India

The Government of India has proclaimed the new decade as a Decade of Development, during which India will meet bold targets for economic growth and social development. At his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister announced that the government had set a target of doubling India's per capita income by the year 2010. This is an ambitious target, but one that we believe is certainly achievable. In order to achieve this target, India needs growth in GNP of the order of 9 percent per year over the next ten years. And in order to achieve this growth rate on a sustained basis, India needs a well-focused growth strategy. This paper outlines some of the key policy challenges in meeting these goals. We believe that India has a chance for a tremendous breakthrough in economic development during the current decade. A decade of opening of the economy has produced new dynamism, most dramatically in the Information Technology sector, but in others as well. The world is waking up to India's crucial role as the largest democracy and as a dynamic economy, if still a low-income one on average. The new technologies (especially information technology and biotechnology) give new opportunities for economic and social development. We suggest additional goals that India should set for herself, especially in the areas of health and education. These goals will help to galvanize domestic public opinion in support of the objectives of development, provide a gauge against which to judge the progress of policies, and help the world community to appreciate the efforts underway, and support them through increased flows of foreign investment. To make the first decade of the 21st Century a true Decade of Development will require a broad-based program of economic and social actions. We highlight some action areas in this regard

Foreign Direct Investment in India: Issues and Problems

In this paper, we have attempted to identify the issues and problems associated with India's current foreign direct investment regime, and more importantly the other associated factors responsible for India's unattractiveness as an investment location. Despite India offering a large domestic market, rule of law, low labor costs, and a well working democracy, her performance in attracting FDI flows has been far from satisfactory. A restrictive FDI regime, high import tariffs, exit barriers for firms, stringent labor laws, poor quality infrastructure, centralized decision-making processes, and a very limited scale of export processing zones make India an unattractive investment location

Strengthening India's Strategy for Economic Growth

We suggest a three-pronged approach to an enhanced growth strategy for India. The first prong is export-led growth. Here the lessons of China are particularly instructive, since China achieved in the past fifteen years the kind of export-led growth that India could have achieved, but failed to do so, because of poor public policies. The second prong is rural improvement, especially in the vast population of the Gangetic valley. India needs a specific strategy to bring modern economic growth to rural India, through a concerted campaign of infrastructure upgrading and appropriate re-design of state policy. The third prong is the maintenance of macroeconomic stability, to avoid the kind of crisis that pushed East Asia into economic collapse. The macroeconomic stakes have obviously been raised in the past year. India's macroeconomic policies will be under scrutiny as perhaps never before following the onset of the East Asian financial crisis

The State of State Government Finances in India

The financial condition of the state governments in India has been a cause for concern for sometime now. Over the years, the consolidated financial position of the state governments has shown a marked deterioration in some of their major deficit indicators. One of the fundamental weaknesses of state government finances in India can be attributed to the increases in non-developmental expenditure, particularly the revenue component of the non-developmental expenditure, and interest payments as a proportion of revenue receipts. Structural imbalances in the form of large revenue deficits, rising interest burden, increasing distortions in the pattern of expenditure, and very slow growing non-tax revenues are major problem areas for state finances. These problems have been aggravated a great deal over the past few years because of a variety of reasons. The resource constraints in state finances have been accentuated by a near stagnant tax-GDP ratio, rising share of non-developmental outlay in the total expenditure, large volumes of hidden or implicit subsidies and increasing financial losses of state enterprises. A growing pressure on state finances has also stemmed from the rising demand for public services. Furthermore, the fiscal situation in the states is likely to come under much greater pressure with the acceptance of the Report of the Fifth Pay Commission by several state governments in India. Be that as it may, the critical problem in state finances is not only one of high levels of expenditure, but also one of increasing distortions in the pattern of expenditure. The three different methods of intergovernmental fiscal transfers have resulted in an inefficient transfer mechanism that has increased bureaucracy at the state level, accommodated numerous interest groups, and delinked plan requirements of states from actual transfers. Similarly, better fiscal performance is not acknowledged with higher transfers, instead the gap filling approach of the Finance Commission discourages fiscal discipline in the states. In the area of expenditure reduction, we have identified several potential areas for controlling expenditure of the state governments. In our view, by raising user charges on water in accordance with the costs incurred in providing water, and aligning tariff rates of the SEBs in line with their costs, the state governments could significantly cut their budgetary losses. In addition, a freeze on state government employment can help save scarce resources to be used for productive purposes elsewhere in the states

Domain wall dynamics in a single CrO2_2 grain

Recently we have reported on the magnetization dynamics of a single CrO$_2$ grain studied by micro Hall magnetometry (P. Das \textit{et al.}, Appl. Phys. Lett. \textbf{97} 042507, 2010). For the external magnetic field applied along the grain's easy magnetization direction, the magnetization reversal takes place through a series of Barkhausen jumps. Supported by micromagnetic simulations, the ground state of the grain was found to correspond to a flux closure configuration with a single cross-tie domain wall. Here, we report an analysis of the Barkhausen jumps, which were observed in the hysteresis loops for the external field applied along both the easy and hard magnetization directions. We find that the magnetization reversal takes place through only a few configuration paths in the free-energy landscape, pointing to a high purity of the sample. The distinctly different statistics of the Barkhausen jumps for the two field directions is discussed.Comment: JEMS Conference, to appear in J. Phys. Conf. Se

Understanding Regional Economic Growth in India

This paper aims to understand the growth experiences of fourteen major states of India in the period 1980 to 1998. We use two measures of convergence, σ-convergence and ß-convergence to examine whether per capita income in the states have been converging or diverging. By both standards of convergence, India demonstrated overall divergence during the period 1980-98, as well as during both the pre-reform and post-reform sub-periods. Interestingly, the richer states experienced a degree of convergence during the post-reform period, while the poorer states did not. Divergence was most notable within the poorer group of states. As against the U.S. states, Japanese prefectures and the European regions, both India and China display no signs of conditional convergence much less unconditional convergence. We suggest four possible hypotheses: (1) the geographical differences are larger in India and China than in the United States, Europe, and Japan; (2) population movements in the United States, Europe, or Japan more readily arbitrage differences across regions; (3) policies of the national or regional governments prevented convergence, and (4) economic convergence is easier at higher levels of economic development than in China and India. A remarkable 82 percent of the cross-state variation in growth is explained by just the urbanization variable in India, and with no hint of any conditional convergence after controlling for the degree of urbanization. The regression estimate shows that a 10-percentage-point higher rate of urbanization is associated with 1.3 percentage points per year higher annual growth. We also offer some preliminary explanations for the unusual growth experiences of some states. We consider four such mysteries: (1) the mediocre growth of Kerala despite excellent social indicators; (2) the relatively fast growth of landlocked, and arid Rajasthan; (3) the improved growth performance of landlocked Madhya Pradesh; and (4) the poor growth performance of coastal Orissa