From: a74k110@phobos.ucc.umass.edu
Subject: Re: India's Place in the World Economy
Organization: J. Random Misconfigured Site
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 04:44:31 GMT
Reply-To: a74k110@phobos.ucc.umass.edu
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In article <93002.033550KONDARED@PURCCVM.BITNET>, <KONDARED@PURCCVM.BITNET> writes...
> 
>In article <1992Dec26.203247.14056@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>,
>a74k110@phobos.ucc.umass.edu says:
>>
>>              India's place in the world economy
>>
>>Rank   Country           GDP     Population     Per capita GDP
>>                       (billion   (million)       (USD)
>>                         USD)
>>
>>[...]
>>17     Taiwan           241             21             11500
>>18 --> India            236            878               269
>>19     Belgium          225             10             22600
>>[...]
>>
>>  As you can see, India has the 18th largest economy sandwiched in between
>>Taiwan and Belgium. India has the second highest population and the lowest
>>per capita GDP.

I didn't write the above piece, although you captioned it as such.

> 
>  The following statistics will complete the picture:
> 
>         Area(sq. mls)    pop. per sq. ml.
> 
>Taiwan      13,900           1,479
>India    1,237,062             676
>Belgium     11,783             842
> 
>  In terms of population and area Taiwan and Belgium are comparable to
>  many DISTRICTS (!!!) in India.
> 
>  What should be even more cause for concern for all Indians of all
>  types (patriotic & unpatriotic, Hindus & Muslims ) is that while
>  Indian's economy is growing at less than 3%, many developing countries'
>  economies are growing at around 8% (china: 9%, Pakistan: 7% etc). There
>  was a thought-provoking artic.in I.Abroad on the effects of these
>  growth rates on India's relative position in that region and the
>  inclination of China and Pakistan to settle their border disputes
>  (surrender the ldisputed land) with India
> 
>  There has been a lot of talk recently about India being a regional
>  superpower.Well the present growth rates indicate that India's relative
>  position in the future world order is not going to be much better than
>  it is now, to say the least.

Well, the projected growth rate for this year is ~6% and as the reforms
take hold I expect it to go even higher.  Also, as I said in my original
post, why does the Asian Bank say Indian has the 9th largest industrial
economy?
Unfortunatly no one has replied to MY post, where I was asking someone with
an economic background to explain exactly how the GDP is figured out
and it's importance.  I'm interested in how the black market economy
(much bigger in India than practically any other country) would enhance
this GDP figure if it were included.  I also asked how cost of living
fits into this figure (since the cost of living of basic items in India is
low).  Namely, if GDP represents the amount of goods and services produced
and if a small Indian farmer sells a ton of rice in India for $1000, but
that same ton of rice is worth $2000 in the U.S. (made up figures of course).
Does the GDP already take this into account, and if not, should it?

Unlike a lot of people I'm very optimistic about India's economic future.
I really believe that as soon as the economic reforms are fully completed
and the currency is made fully convertable, the economic growth will rival 
any of the asian "tigers", if not better.  It's only been a year since
these reforms have been started in full form.  I mean China, even though
they're a communist country, started their economic reforms in the early
80's.  I say, wait around 10 years, then see how much progress has been 
made.

-Venkat