Strengthening India’s Strategy for Economic Growth

Nirupam Bajpai and Jeffrey D. Sachs

Development Discussion Paper No. 641 July 1998

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.

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