CGD in the News

The Wrenching Churn of Global Equity Markets May Usher India's Next Growth Wave (Business Today)

August 30, 2011

Senior fellow Arvind Subramanian was quoted in a Business Today article on India's recent economic growth.

From the Article

Perhaps it was the TV channels running - almost looping - stories that an accused in a telecom scandal had dragged his name into a corruption case. Or, it may have been uncertainty over India's economic future after two decades of reforms.

Whatever the reason, Palaniappan Chidambaram was a listless speaker at a book launch function the last week of July. "Reforms can be stalled, if you do not take an aggressive stance," the Union Home Minister said. Stalled reforms could drag the country's growth trajectory down to a range of five per cent to six per cent, he added. Coming from India's longest-serving finance minister in 20 years, this was almost alarming. For, growth in India has averaged 8.4 per cent over the last five years, despite a short recession in much of the developed world.

The debate at the book launch - it was a book on India's transformation since 1991 - unsurprisingly focused on governance, or lack of it, in India. Questions about the sustainability of India's economic trajectory have been raised earlier, but were ignored in the euphoria of a phase of high growth.

Read it here.