The Sources of Economic Growth in India: 1950-1 to 1999-2000

S. Sivasubramonian has long been regarded as the foremost authority on national income estimation and analysis in India. The National Income of India in the Twentieth Century (OUP 2000) was the first book of its kind to present national income estimates for the entire period from 1900 to 2000. This book, identifying the sources and triggers of economic growth in India between 1951 and 2000, is a result of the interpretative work that Sivasubramonian undertook using the growth accounting approach first developed by Edward Denison for USA. Using the same measure of output as earlier, he presents detailed evidence on and causal analysis of factors affecting growth of output. Specifically, the book discusses: Estimates of the growth of employment by age and sex, and by level of education in different sectors of the economy. New estimates of key components of gross and net fixed capital stock and inventories, and shows how they differ from official estimates. Changes in the cultivated area providing weights to add together the different inputs in order to derive a measure of total factor productivity which gives a measure of the rate of technical progress. Growth accounts which also show the impact of foreign trade, structural change in output and inputs, changing energy inputs, and the effect of weather fluctuations on agricultural performance. The transformation of the Indian economy from a state of near stagnation during the first half of the twentieth century under colonial rule to one of moderate to rapid growth in the second half following independence and the era of planned economic development has evoked much interest and attention. India is now the world’s fourth largest economy and there are very few countries which can match its income growth in real terms per head of population over the past decade. The result of immense and meticulous research underpinned by a lifetime of experience in this field, this book will remain a basic reference text for many years. It provides a coherent statistical framework for the Indian economy, which will be of fundamental importance for economists and economic historians who want to study India’s performance in historical perspective.