Thursday 9 October 2008


THE HALCYON YEARS, 2003-8

Shankar Acharya

Business Standard, October 9, 2008

Gloom and doom is the prevailing mood as the world of global finance comes tumbling down and levies substantial collateral damage on global economic prosperity. Instead of one more sombre article on this now familiar theme, let me swim against the tide for a while and celebrate India’s economic prosperity of the past five years, 2003/4 to 2007/8. In doing so, I also hope to meet the criticism of some friends that my columns tend to dwell too much on the dark side of things (Darth Vader rest in peace). Actually, this complaint comes mostly from my Punjabi friends who are usually brimming with incorrigible optimism and gusto (even when the sky is about to fall down) and cannot sympathize too easily with my Bengali pessimism. After the Singur-Nano fiasco, they may better understand why we Bongs tend to attach low probabilities to good outcomes.

Most people know about India’s stellar economic growth in the past five years, at a scorching average annual rate of 8.8 percent (If they don’t, the finance ministry and planning commission will be happy to send them the data in multi-media). That’s a full third faster than the next best five year period in the country’s recorded history, namely in the immediate post-reform quinquennium of 1992-97, when the average growth clocked 6.6 percent.

(...) [artículo aquí]

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