-----Mensagem original----- De: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]Em nome de uvj at vsnl.com Enviada em: quarta-feira, 14 de abril de 2004 12:48 Para: lbo Assunto: Re: [lbo-talk] Aspect of India's Econ Report: The Real StateofIndia'sEconomy
Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> the Indian economy's apparent boom
> is not what it seems and does not benefit the majority
> of the population being built largely upon speculative
> capital that could flee in the blinking of an eye.
It is generally accepted that Indian financial markets are lacking in depth. Indian stock markets are booming for about a year now, but the economy is not exactly booming. However, the economy has grown steadily at an annual compound growth rate of 5.6% since 1980. This is a good growth rate. It's not built on the speculative capital flows. At that rate of growth, the GDP trebles every 20 years. India should have the GDP of $ 1.5 trillion by 2020 if this rate of growth is maintained.
> My impression is that this is a caricature and,
> factoring in the usual capitalist enforced
> inequalities, some real (and really distributed)
> economic growth is occurring.
A survey of Indian household carried out in 2000 showed that 2.5 million households owned cars and 22.5 million households owned two wheelers, i.e. 25 million households or 150 million people.Then there were about 300 million TV viewers in 2000. You can say these are the main beneficiaries of economic growth in the recent years.
See the article below from the Economic Times for a comparative picture of Indian stock markets.
Ulhas
-I would like to add my few cents to that discussion. I think that, when a country -has its per capita GDP growing at more than 5%/year, like India and China, it´s -extremely unlikely that only a minority of the population is gaining something. -However, when one analyse present and past economic booms worldwide, we can see -that in some cases (South Korea, Japan, Taiwan), the benefits of economic growth -were fairly well distributed among the population (as the income unequalities in -those countries actually improved in the boom years), while in other cases (Brazil -in the 70´s, Chile in late 80´s and early 90´s, China in the last 10 years), the -economic growth happened in an environment of worsening unequalities, where the -higher classes gained a lot, the majority of people gained something and the -poorest people gained nothing or even lost something (this seems to apply also -to the USA in the 90´s...any comments, Doug?). The big trouble with the second -pattern is that, when the good times are over, there is much potential for social -unrest, as the unequality keeps growing and people who gaine almost nothing is -the good years are asked to pay the bill. Just look at my country, which emerged -from the 70´s boom with a Ginni index of 55 and has been suffering from chronic -stagnation in the last 20 years. A recent report by IBGE (Brazilian Institute -of Geography and statistics) show that we had 2,000,000 (!) homicides in the -last 20 years, and that number increased by 120% (!) from 1990-2000. In other -words, we are living in an undeclared civil war. Now Ulhas, I have some doubts -to what extent the current Indian boom is following the first and the second -pattern. However, it´s clear to me that China has this unequal development -and I wonder what will happen in the Chinese society in the event of prolonged -slowdown.
Alexandre
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