Talk:Economy of India/Archive 3

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Archive 4

Warning

There's some talk in orkut between Pakistanis who are ganging up to vandalise this page as well as other India related information in the wiki. I suggest that edits be strictly monitored and vandals blocked.

huh?

"growing unemployment and growing poverty, which has seen a decrease of just 10% since the 1980s."

just thought i'd point that out :P --142.68.236.133 00:15, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Demographics

I still think this should be in ther determinants section since without humn capital it would be pretty difficult to have an economy at all. --nixie 06:58, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Ok, will move it. Anything else. pamri 07:16, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous edit I reverted

I wonder if the input that I reverted has a mass appeal. Please see the edit and if any part of it should be retained. I dont agree with the view, especially since it is unsubstantiated and perhaps POV, but I am not that sure. This is just to be politically correct :) Saksham 23:19, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

You can gladly remove such POV laden statements without blinking an eyelid. The pre-colonial section pretty much sums up whatever the anon wanted to point out. pamri 04:13, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Minor Colonial Period POV Issue

Hi, I was wondering if information concerning the imposition of monopoly in the textile industry, salt taxes, etc. by the British should be included here. The section seems to make an abrupt transition from "standardization of weights, etc" to "poor country." These are key points in India's economic history as well.

The history section is mainly concerned with giving a broad macro-economic overview and does not get into details. You can always add those details to the Economic history of India or Economic reforms in India. If the salt tax, etc., has to be included, then it has to be on the basis of its importance in provoking economic nationalism rather than economic impact, which even the left-nationalist views on economic history seem to regard as minisicule. The abrupt transition occured in later edits, but the content seems to be still balanced. But you do raise some valid points and the section can probably be reworked/reworded. pamri 06:46, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

The Scotsman

Hello fellow Wikis,

I thought you'd be interested in this:

China and India bury hatchet

DAN MCDOUGALL IN NEW DELHI

THE colonial period left India with the foundations to grow and operate an effective economy. Property rights, free trade, fixed exchange rates, a uniform currency system, uniform weights and measures, open capital markets and a well developed system of railways and telegraphs, as well as a modern legal system, were all beneficial to growth.

Now.....

Wikipedia's Article on the Indian Economy

The colonial rule brought along a favourable institutional environment that guaranteed property rights, ensured free trade, had fixed exchange rates, uniform currency system, uniform weights and measures, open capital markets, well developed system of railways and telegraphs, a bureaucracy free from political interferences and a modern legal system.

I know this probably goes on a lot, but shouldn't he have referenced Wikipedia, even with Copylefting?

Here is the link. pamri 04:18, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Since its not verbatim copying, its difficult to book him for not referencing. =Nichalp «Talk»= 07:46, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations

Congratulations to Pamri, Saksham, Nichalp, Kaal and other editors who helped bringing this article to FA status. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 03:42, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

Rural Employment Guarantee Bill

Have added a line. Didn't know how to add the reference. If the line is kept, could someone add this link? Saksham 14:34, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Disguised unemployment

What is meant by "disguised unemployment"? People feigning to get benefits? -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 05:51, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

See Unemployment types#Hidden unemployment & Underemployment. In India, the most common scenario is too many people working in their family business/farm over the required nos., when they don't find suitable employment elsewhere, thus not contributing to the farm/firms' productivity. Pamri • Talk 09:10, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh, got it now. Thanks. -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 10:41, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Learnt

Thank you to all users who made this page. I learnt several things. Fine. --MissingLinks 08:55, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

pre-colonial trade & colonial rule

there is no mention of domestic trade in pre-colonial times in the history section. and coupled with the statements that village "economies was largely isolated and self-sustaining" and "Superstitions about foreign travel ...", i think gives a misleading impression of a lack of trade and industry in those times. does anybody point to info abt domestic trade tht can be included.

I think a point can be added about domestic trade and will try to de-emphasize the "largely isolated and self-sustaining" bit, since the romantic ideal of a happy village economy, until it was disrupted by the evil empire, comes from Charles Metcalfe's The Fifth Report for the Select Committee of the House of Commons, on the Affairs of the East India Company.(ref:CEH2. see wikiquote article for the specific quote)

the statement that colonial rule brought "favourable institutional environment that guaranteed property rights, ensured free trade,uniform currency system, uniform weights and measures, open capital markets, ... a bureaucracy free from political interferences and a modern legal system." is, i think, somewhat far-fetched -

• wasn't there differential access to property rights, access to legal systems and free trade for the english, other europeans and indians?
  • While discrimination definetly existed, I am not sure, if it existed on a scale that affected the economy as a whole. There are exceptions of course, like the land revenue system, foreign trade that benefited the british.
• is it known that the policy of imposing uniform weights and measures actually bore fruit in reality?
  • You mean there has been no benefit from switching over to the metric system? Or did you mean anything else?
    • meant whether it was actually done - whether in most or typical markets, buyers and sellers used these weights and measures. use of non-standard currency names and measures is found even today in the unorganised retail markets.
      • Use of standards, especially weights & meassures didn't percolate to the local traders overnight, but since the colonial rulers dominated trade in one form/another, there were able to dictate or atleast initiate a change.
• a colonial bureaucracy free from political interference appears to me to be contradictory ...
  • No doubt, political interference existed and ideology peddling was happening as well, but the administration, compared to today was largely free from political interferences. Whether it is beneficial is a different issue. (me thinks its not) I think, we can still retain this wording and also write about issues, where the british raj has peddled influence through its bureaucracy here.
• wasn't the modern legal system unused/underused by indians?
  • I don't know what you mean by underused/unused. But it did exist and the details of its utilisation by Indians does not belong here.
    • my understanding (possibly incorrect) is that the legal system was difficult for indians to use, with barriers of cost, language, culture ... etc. so am curious if there is evidence to believe that the colonial legal system did significantly affect economic life - for instance, did it lead to widespread use of legal contract enforcement, instead of an informal, socially or (illegal) threat-mediated one.
      • The use of courts for settlement of disputes/contract enforcement were definetly there. I will try to get specific instances later in the week/month. In the meanwhile, here are some books on colonial law. Or you can use any one of the links at http://www.loc.gov/law/guide/india.html to find out laws relating to contracts, business and most of them do trace back to that period.

• the use of tax revenue collected by the east india company (in bengal, for instance) for financing its operations, a trade climate favouring english manufacture, capital and trade, corruption in the company services ... etc, were on the flip side of colonial trade and administration (at least, from what i remember from my school history).

i think the statement needs some POV work.

• • Yes, not much has been covered about the east india company.

Doldrums 14:05, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

• • I agree. Let's try to fix this. Manik Raina 14:45, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

• • Thanks for the comments. I have address specific points above, but I will like to point two things. One, the history section gives an macroeconomic overview of the country's economy & the conditions that influenced it. Hence, it is mainly a summary and details are to go into Economic history of India. The colonial & pre-colonial sections were difficult to summarize, mainly because of a large body of work and a growing body of revisionist thinking (opposed to the left-nationalist viewpoint). I think, the main problem with the colonial section now is, while we successfully managed to summarize, we may left out some key points and/or made the section too abrupt. Secondly, most of the criticism I see here are aimed at the east india company rule, whose economic policies have not been specifically addressed. This is not to say, you are wrong or the edits won't be done, but the reasons for the POV. I will try to edit 'morrow & see if some more content can be added to the colonial section. But the inference, that a broader macroeconomic view of India during this period reveals that there were segments of both growth and decline, resulting from changes bought about by colonialism and a world that was moving towards industrialisation and economic integration. will still stay. Pamri • Talk 18:40, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

agree with u that some of this is to be adressed in the economic history article, bfor being well-summarised here. agree again on "broader macroeconomic view reveals ..." statement. my concern in with impression, which i feel the article conveys, of a stagnant pre-colonial economy which developed in the colonial period, directly as an effect of colonial rule (other contributing factors - growth in world trade & economy, industrialisation, european trade practices are not mentioned). i believe that this is not the true (or atleast complete picture).

The ''a broader macroeconomic view... conveys the other contributing factors that you mention (which i see you have added already.) that have contributed to both the detriment/benefit of India's economy, but it may not have been clear.

sorry for not actually contributing edits or supplying references for issued raised. am not particularly well-versed in the area. will try to do so, in the future. and congratulations on doing a good job on the article. Doldrums

Thanks for your comments and I will add another para later to cover the issues raised. --Pamri • Talk 05:35, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

In response to call for more info on pre-colonial external trade, I'm quoting some info from Tamil people#The classical period:

The economy [of Tamil kingdoms], however, was centred around foreign trade, and there is evidence of significant contact with 
Europe. Large hoards of Roman coins and evidence of the presence of 
Roman traders have been discovered at Karur and Arikamedu, and there is evidence that 
at least two embassies were sent to the Roman Emperor Augustus by Pandya kings. Potsherds with 
Tamil writing have also been found in excavations on the Red Sea, suggesting the presence of Tamil 
merchants there (Mahadevan 2003). An anonymous 1st century traveler's account written in
Greek, Periplus Maris Erytraei, describes the ports of the Pandya and Chera 
kingdoms and the trade with them in substantial detail, and indicates that the chief exports of the Tamils
in those days were pepper, malabathrum, pearls, ivory, silk, spikenard, diamonds, 
sapphires, and tortoiseshell (Casson 1989).

-- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 13:18, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

changes to industry para

I have reordered the 5 Ind.cos. by Market capitalisation (MC) table as per their Forbes Global 2000 ranking, since MC is pretty volatile (since its based on stock movement) and hence does not give as clear a picture as the forbes list, which ranks companies on parameters like Sales, Profit, Assets and Market Values, besides being global. I have moved this sentence here, since it does not fit in the industry para. Will readd it in some form or reword it. In terms of Market capitalisation, India remains one of the top 15 markets in the world with $450 billion in mid-2005. [1] --Pamri • Talk 14:05, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I propose removing lists for 2005 and 2006 and just keeping the list for 2007. Abhiag 20:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

grammar in intro

First of all, congrats on having one of the most clearly worded intros of all the featured articles I've checked so far. With only a few minor changes the intro was entirely (and mostly correctly) machine parsable by link grammar. One little bump I ran into was the follow text:

The socio-economic problems India faces are a burgeoning population, lack of infrastructure, growing inequality, unemployment and poverty, which has seen a decrease of 10% since the 1980s.

It isn't completely clear which of the list has decreased. Commons sense would have me assume the last, but only because it seems unlikly that all would have decreased by 10%. I'd like to adjust the sentence so the parsing is non-ambigious, but I need to know which actually decreased! Thanks --Gmaxwell 21:49, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Fixed. The 10% number applies to poverty only. Actually, it is one of the indicators of poverty, child malnutrition that has declined by that percentage, but I think that the 10% figure is valid and gives an indication of a possible trend. Sunray 02:26, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

National Income estimates

I have moved the para on national income estimates to Economic history of India. While the data is interesting, it really does not add much here and unnecessarily lengthens the history section. Contrast it with the two other estimates added, which are to the point and act as background info. --Pamri • Talk 03:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Uniform weights and measures

I've noticed how the Colonial section suggests that the British introduced "uniform weights and measures" to India, when India has clearly already had its own (post-Harappan) system of weights and measures, which is described in the following article: Hindu units of measurement. Since the reference to weights and measures doesn't appear to be true, I'm going to remove it until someone can prove otherwise. - Jagged 85, 18/01/2006

The uniform weights & measures doesn't suggest that those didn't exist before or that there weren't kingdoms that regulated it, but it does suggest that during the colonial period, a uniform system based on metric, led to wider acceptance both due to policies/trade. I am reverting it and will probably reword it to reflect the above when I do the rewrite of the history section. --Pamri • Talk 13:08, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The Hindu units of measurement is a system associated with Hinduism, not any particular kingdoms or states. Therefore it would have been used by all Hindus at the time, and is still in use today, hence this particular system of weights and measures was already uniform throughout India. Please keep this in mind when re-writing the history section. --Jagged 85, 22/01/2006

True and thanks for the work you have done. Please feel free to add those to that article and I will pick and choose things relevant for this section from an economic POV. --Pamri • Talk 00:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Update South Korea comparison chart with 2005 data

As it stands the graph shows a comparison of the GDP percapita of various South Asian countries, and South Korea as a percentage to the US, but it only goes up to the year 1995, it would be nice if the chart showed the effects of India's liberalization from 1995 to 2005. I did some calculations using data here: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html

But I am not a registered user so5 I don't want to update the image.

Thanks. if you could paste the data here, I could update the image for you. But I suggest registering, since it won't take much time. --Pamri • Talk 01:12, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

I just registered. Here are the calculations for 2005

• South Korea: (20300/41800) ~= 48.6%
• India: (3400/41800) ~= 8.1%
• Pakistan: (2400/41800) ~= 5.7%
• Sri Lanka: (4300/41800) ~= 10.3%
• Bangladesh: (2100/41800) ~= 5.0%

Not sure how to upload images. @Dhruval 03:46, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

General updates

Article like this is going to need lots of updates over time. I am going to make a list of data that needs to be updated (I would do it but I find the citation style way too confusing to bother myself).

• Indian GDP figures need to be updated to 2005 numbers. This are available from various sites like CIA factbook
• Indian export and import figures need to be updated.--Blacksun 21:58, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

That avialable in the CIA factbook is just an estimate and not the real GDP growth rate. Chanakyathegreat 12:07, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The CIA factbook data is quite outdate for things like GDP. Better to use the worldbank figures. You can find the URL in the reference section. I will try to update it once I find some time. --Pamri • Talk 09:27, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Here are the latest export figures: Indian exports hit $100bn registering a growth of 25%.--Blacksun 08:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

GDP per capita wrong

India is in the 152'th place from your link there not 155!!!

Time to trim down article

This article is too long and cumbersome. Its time to create stubs for national labour market and its associated regulations and laws. Anwar saadat 22:53, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with you. It is not really that long and it has been sectioned nicely. If someone is not interested in a particular section they can skip it. I personally hate creating too many "main articles" as I believe that a lot of people would rather read few more lines instead of clicking on another article which is going to be mostly same as the original section. --Blacksun 07:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Poverty

The introductory section claims that poverty has reduced by 10% since the 80s, a claim that is flatly contradicted by the section on poverty. Also, the point about " The question of whether economic reforms has reduced or increased poverty has fuelled debates" stands just by itself without mentioning the corresponding figures (39% to 26%). I'd change them myself, but I just wanted to confirm if it is here through some sort of consensus. — Ravikiran 06:21, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Cause and effect?

"However, India's huge population results in a relatively low per capita income of $3,100 at PPP." It's not like India has a set GDP and the huge population makes the per capita income low. Wouldn't it be more correct to say India's huge population results in the large GDP numbers despite the low per capita income? I don't particularly think it should be phrased the way I put it either, but the way it is now bothers me. Any thoughts?

Merge FDI article

Fdi india seems an odd standalone article. How about merging it into the External trade and investment section here. Cordless Larry 23:56, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Anwar's edits

Anwar, your latest edits [2] probably mean that these should start having subarticles of their own. I don't think that we need those exact figures in tables in the main article. — Ravikiran 06:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

All figures are needed. When sub-articles are eventually created for Agriculture, Mining, Manufacturing and Services, these data may be moved there. Anwar 06:57, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Copyedits

I have made one round of copyedits [3]. While some are grammar changes, many involve removal of overqualifications (we don't have to compare with other developing countries every time we say something negative about India) and other changes that I think will tighten up the stuff, but also change the meaning subtly. Please have a look. In particular, I have rephrased the sentence on poverty that was bothering me above and changed "The question of whether economic reforms has reduced or increased poverty" to "The question of whether economic reforms have reduced poverty or not" because AFAIK no one has been claiming that it worsened poverty, only that it has not alleviated poverty enough.

---

UPDATE ARTICLE

According to the new World Bank figures, India's poverty rate is 35% and not 25% as it is usually typed here. Can someone please rewrite that part of the article and change it? Thank you very much. Here is the link: Economic Report Card- Napoleon12 10:38 am, 08 Jul 2006

NOTE

looks like this article was written by some right wing chauvinist....."emerging superpower"......indians need to give up this illusionistic, hyprocritic approach...a country doesnt become a super power or not even close to "emerging" by just posting some growth in GDP or growth in software services....GDP per capita probably ranks indians at around 130-150 in the world..much below even bhutan and sri lanka..same with human development index...

The picture of 1000 rupees note in the article is seem to be printed in some where else. There are so many printers in naghbouring countries whose notes are superior than the currency notes printed in Nashik Printing Press. Also notes printed at Nashik Printing Press looks like fake notes.

Poverty reason for India's rank

• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1822829.cms

Seven of the top 10 happiest countries, according to the first 'World Map of Happiness', are from western democracies, while countries in Asia, known for their strong cultural values, family ties and collective identities surprisingly scored low — China (82), Japan (90) and Thailand (76).

While Denmark's satisfaction with life index was placed at 273.33, India's was at 180. The map, claiming to be the first to illustrate international differences in happiness, placed US at 23, UK at 41 and France at 62.

vkvora 06:49, 29 July 2006 (UTC)