Growth, Development Deficits and Sustainability

This paper extends a conception of balance or sustainability to the Indian economy over the course of its evolution since the reforms initiated in 1991. An overview of the current juncture and the path leading to it points to mounting development deficits reflecting missed opportunities and skewed socioeconomic priorities. Much the most important of these imbalances fall to one side of the fault lines of conflict between the interests of haves and have-nots that a tumultuous year has exposed. Drawing on insights from economic theories of growth and of policy implementation, the analysis advances the notion of a sustainable economy in terms of the balancing of ends and means.