External: China’s Third Booster
China posted impressive economic growth between 1990 and 2012.
Poverty: Is MNREGA Benefiting the Rural Poor?
Enacted in 2005 and launched on February 2, 2006 the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) is aimed at providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
External: Financing the Indian Current Account Deficit
The current account deficit has fallen dramatically from 4.9 per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 2013-14:Q1 to 1.3 per cent in 2013–14:Q2.
Rachna Sharma
Never mind what surveys might say about Indians being among the happiest people on earth. A country that’s home to a third of the world’s poor must almost by definition have quite a large number of people who are pretty miserable; at least in terms of economic well-being.
This is where the Misery Index a measure devised by economist Arthur Okun as the sum of the rates of unemployment and inflation might prove useful.
Admittedly a crude approximation of well-being the index is based on the assumption that a high rate of unemployment and inflation are the most proximate causes of human unhappiness. Hence the term Misery Index.
The index as constructed by Okun serves as a reasonable approximation in the developed world. But extending it to developing countries like India is likely to miss other dimensions that have a major impact on well-being. So based on the latest (68th) round of NSSO data we constructed a Modified Misery Index (MMI) for the states taking into account dimensions such as access to healthcare percentage of the population below the poverty line and food inflation rather than the overall inflation rate.
The results while broadly on expected lines test a few long-accepted beliefs. A ranking of states on the basis of the MMI shows Uttar Pradesh was on top in the misery index in 2004-05.
However it was overtaken by Jharkhand in 2011-12 mainly on account of a moderation in food inflation. Tamil Nadu the least “miserable” state in 2004-05 ceded place to Andhra Pradesh in 2011-12.
Which are the states that made the greatest strides in reducing misery? Surprise surprise! Odisha heads the list moving six places up in the league tables followed by Punjab and Andhra Pradesh that moved up five places each. Odisha’s dramatic improvement could be attributed to the fall in theunemployment rate from 7.3%in 2004-05 to 3% in 2011-12 even as the poverty ratio fell from 57.2% to 32.6%.
The worst-performing states over the same period are Madhya Pradesh Chhattisgarh and Delhi. While Madhya Pradesh showed a sharp increase in the MMI moving “up” from 17th position in 2004-05 to 10th position in 2011-12 Chhattisgarh and Delhi also fare poorly with Chhattisgarh slipping five places and Delhi four.
While the increase in Chhattisgarh’s MMI can be attributed to its high poverty rate rise in unemployment and high food inflation despite the success of its much-touted PDS high food inflation wasresponsible for the increase inDelhi’s MMI.
A word on the methodology: The four indicators of misery used in the Modified Misery Index (MMI) – unemployment rate foodinflation poverty rate and lack of access to health services – were transformed into unit-free indices by normalising them using”distance from best and worst performers” method as in the original HDI.
The economic fundamentals of the Indian economy continue to remain weak despite several policy initiatives taken by the government during the past few months.
The 86th round of the Business Expectations Survey carried out in the second quarter of the current fiscal (September 2013) shows a drop in the NCAER Business Confidence Index.
For a long time, the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) were attributed mainly to the energy sector, which is an intensive user of fuels such as diesel and petroleum.
Bountiful rain has had a positive impact on agricultural growth but it will not be enough to pull up the rest of the economy which is suffering from a lack of confidence, high inflation, dismal domestic scenario and uncertain external scenario. Predictably growth rates have been revised onwards.
The goal in this paper is to correct growing regional imbalances within India. One way of doing that was to integrate some of the more remote border areas with neighbouring areas in other countries. . Darjeeling borders Illam and Jhapa, the centres of tea production in Nepal. In Rangpur divison of Bangladesh, Panchagarh district produces tea which neighbors Uttar Dinajpur, one of the poorest districts in North Bengal. We study the five districts for possible competitiveness, clusters in the region and its state of infrastructure (transport, energy and water). We examine whether there is any potential to develop value chains across the region. If one uses standard economic theory there is little chance of regional integration between the districts because the regions are producing the same “homogenous” product. The question we asked in the beginning was whether value chains can be developed. The answer is yes and no. Value chains in the standard South East Asian manner cannot be developed because of the nature of the product and just-in-time production cannot take place with the current border constraints. Trade in intermediate inputs and services can help the poorer districts of South Asia to uplift themselves.
