The Economic Vision for Precocious, Cleavaged India

India has more than 1.2 billion people, and it is has been growing rapidly and carrying out substantial policy changes, but it seems to get only a small fraction of the attention paid to China. For those looking to get up to speed on India's economy, a useful starting point is the Economic Survey 2016-2017, published in January 2017 by India's Ministry of Finance (where Arvind Subramanian is the Chief Economic Adviser). The page also has a drop-down menu with links to previous annual surveys.

The title of this post is taken from the title of Chapter 2 of the report. "Precocious" refers to the facgt that India has been a democracy for so long, and that it turned to democracy started when the country was at such low level of per capita GDP. The term "cleavaged" refers to separations in India. As the report notes: At the same time, India was also a highly cleavaged society. Historians haveremarked how it has many more axes of cleavage than other countries: language and scripts, religion, region, caste, gender, and class ....

Here are seven points from the report that stuck with me....

Conversable Economist
The Economic Vision for Precocious, Cleavaged IndiaTimothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota