India as an Asian Tiger

            

                  

                      After the Independence in 1947, India followed a socialist pattern of development, emphasizing self-sufficiency and public sector dominance. Right after the independence India had to opt one country from two global powers of that time United states of America and Russia, and India chose Russia rather than to go with America.

                     During the first three decades after the independence of India, Indian average GDP growth rate grew at 3.5 percent from 1948 to 1978.In 1980's some economic liberalization policies helped Indian economy to grew GDP at 5.5 percent, But this was based on unsustainable borrowing, and it ended horribly when India ran out of foreign exchange reserve in 1991.It was widely expected that rajive gandhi had been going to win the election of June 1991 but was assassinated by a Sri Lankan terrorist. After the death  of rajive gandhi not even a single party won the majority of seats in 1991 election, and congress party formed a coalition government which was headed by Narasimha Rao.

                                             So, both the political and economic situation of India was gone from bad to worse and that was the time when soviet union was on the edge of collapse, followers of socialist ideology was defeated by the western block who was the supporter of capitalism and that was end of cold war era, And India had to left the socialist ideology and turned away from socialism to half-baked liberalism. Due to the successful reforms, from 1994 to 1997 averaged GDP growth was 7.5 percent of India.

Asian financial crisis of 1997-98  was the first test case of Indian economy. Growth took a hit, yet in part of country because it was a relatively closed economy. The country economy survived without any serious damage unlike other neighboring countries where economic crisis shattered the economy.    

 Today, India is called by several terms like (incredible India ,Glorious India and shining India).According to the world bank and other international financial institution are predicting that Indian economy is going to pass the china's economy in two to three decades. But in reality poor people of India don't even have the basic facilities. Even in the out skirts of big cities like Mumbai and Delhi people don't have the facilities of toilet.

                                                                                                                No doubt India is a big  market but over the period of time India's potential has decreased as it's economic growth fell from 8.5% to 5.3%. This is the slowest rate in the last 7 years and in addition to that there is a budget deficit equivalent to one tenth of the GDP.

                                            Wide spread poverty is another problem of India ,even though India has cut down the poverty by half by the end of this year .But still world's one third poor’s live in India and more than one third of all malnourished children .On the other hand Narindra modi government has cut social sector spending by about 30% and proposed limiting the provision of subsidized food grains to 47% of the population from the current 60%.

             Inspite of that India is investing a huge part of GDP on defense , Narindra Modi govt allocated 40.4 US billion dollars for defense ,which is 7.7 percent more from previous year's allocation. however this increase in the defense budget is still not sufficient to modernize the Indian army. The hawkish behavior of India is not only towards the traditional enemy Pakistan but also against all the neighboring countries like Sri Lanka , Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh is cause of great turbulence in the region. If we see this region ,The vast population is under the line of poverty but instead of spending more on the eradicating the poverty ,the regional countries are investing on defense due to this Indian hostility. Russia and India are the ally from the beginning of India but the rivalry between USA and china is growing relationship between India and USA.

Because, China is capturing the regional and as well as the global economy. USA wants to restrict the rapidly growing economy and influence of china and trying to use India as a tool to threat china, so USA is giving so many privileges to India like(member of nuclear supplier group)and lobbing for a permanent member of united nation security council.

In most of the states there are insurgencies going on i.e kashmir ,chattisgarrh,Orresa,Assam,Naga land etc; almost 20% area of india is under the control of maoist which means 55 districts are not under the control of indian government.All the provincial leadership of congress party were killed by the separatists in Behar.Recently 20 indian soldiers were killed by separatist group in Manipur.  

                                                    

In nut shell, India first need to solve their internal problems rather than to interfere into the matters of other countries.India can not compete with china.It is impossible for India to be an Asian tiger because there are so many insurgencies within the country and there is a big gap between rich and poor. There population is growing day by day, “according to the UN report population of India will cross the china's population in 2030.Many economic analyst say that population play a very vital role in the economic growth because they can use them as a work force but in my opinion how a country can use their population as a work force if they do not have the basic necessities of life, due to the malnutrition 46.7 percent children of India is low weight which is worse than the any African country, anemia affects over 80 percent population in several states of India.

It is a fact that Indian economy is growing and no doubt India has produced so many billionaires’ like TATA ,Birla ,Ambani and Mital etc but the trickle down effect of this growing economy does not reflect in the lives of common people and it is still a dream.

Bibliography : UN report ,times of India ,economic survey of India, WB & IMF reports

By: Kamil Ayoub