India to become the world's 3rd largest economy by 2015

This article is from HT
The heading obviously only holds in PPP terms. In absolute $ terms , we do have a long way to go yet.

Check the projections for 2050 and see where the US,China and India stand. A bit scary this.
Anyways it remains to be seen how this shift in the balance of economic power will impact the rest of the world.

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India is slated to become the third largest economy with a share of 14.3 per cent of global economy by 2015 and graduate to become the "third pole" and growth driver by 2035.

"As the share of USA in World GDP falls from 21 to 18 per cent and that of India rises from 6 to 11 per cent in 2025, the latter emerges as third pole in the global economy," economist Arvind Virmani said in an article published in ADB India Economic Bulletin.

India, which is now the fourth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity, will overtake Japan and become third major economic power within 10 years.

India will increase its share from 8.2 in 2015 to 11.2 per cent of world GDP by 2025, and is projected to be about 60 per cent of the size of US economy.

"The transformation into tri-polar economy will be completed by 2035 with Indian economy only a little smaller than US economy but larger than that of Western Europe," Virmani, a director of economic think-tank ICRIER, said.

By 2035, India is likely to be a larger growth driver than the 6 largest countries in EU, though its impact will be a little over half that of the US.

India's share of global economy would be 14.3 per cent, while China will dominate with 30 per cent and USA at second place with 16 per cent by 2035.

China's economy is projected to become 50 per cent larger than US economy by 2025 and almost double that of USA by 2035, he said.

At this point China's share of the world economy will be equal to the share of the US and Indian economies taken together, he said.

India's Promise...

Awesome article on why India is still developing ....and not developed. Found on the web here

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At the beginning of the great European explorations of the world, India was home to a fabulous amount of wealth. Indeed, all the invading empires from the Mughals to the British became vastly rich. And the Maharajahs and Nawabs in the Princely States that were scattered throughout India accumulated enormous wealth over many centuries.

The end of British colonialism left Indians with some amazing opportunities and daunting challenges. Few countries have started with so much promise.

Those that became leaders of the world’s largest democracy were given a modern physical infrastructure that included one of the best railway systems in the world. And they were in possession of a well-developed “institutional” infrastructure that provided the possibilities of gaining from the advantages associated with the rule of law.

But the new rulers in New Delhi that took over from the British soon began to squander the birthright of their own citizens. Much of India’s population suffers from dire poverty, caused by serial blunders in economic policy.

In a classic case of deflecting blame for their own shortcomings, many politicians insist that the size of the population is India’s biggest problem. It is hard to imagine a more cynical or despicable lie. If left free from the extensive interferences of various levels of government, the energy and creativity of the Indian people would soon allow them to be among the richest on earth.

Indians are not poor because there are too many people. Instead, many Indians are poor because of regulations that interfere with the creation of new businesses and jobs.

India was ranked 116^th in a report by the World Bank (“Doing Business”) that evaluates the ease of doing business in 155 countries. The rankings examine the time, cost and minimum capital requirement to start a business as well as the difficulty of hiring and firing workers. Also examined are barriers for obtaining licenses and registering property as well as access to credit and protection for investors.

India’s political culture is guided by socialist instincts that reflect the beliefs of its modern founders. In a preamble to the Indian Constitution modified by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency of the 1970s, India is identified as a “sovereign, secular, socialist republic”.

At the same time, an amended section in the Representation of Peoples Act required that all recognized and registered parties must swear by this Preamble. All parties must in theory stand for socialism. There are no parties that espouse classical liberalism, even while there are many communist parties.

There is difficulty in abandoning ideas with such honored lineage, but socialism has been widely discredited and abandoned so Indians should reconsider this commitment. Perhaps local disasters arising from India’s socialist state provide better reasons to give up on it.

Public policy guided by socialism promotes division, social instability and economic destruction. Socialism ignored the fact that poverty arises from low economic growth and insufficient capital formation. As indicated by its rank of 66 out of 127 countries in the Economic Freedom of the World report released by the Cato Institute (2005), India has too many policies that hinder private investments.

In the past, it was suggested that India experienced an unavoidably slow “Hindu rate of growth” based upon its dominant cultural heritage. Instead, socialism and interventionist policies caused slow economic growth in the past and imposed the greatest harm on the poor and unskilled that lost access to economic opportunities.

The Capital Access Index (CAI), constructed by the Milken Institute, evaluates the quality of domestic capital markets. The Index follows the premise that access to financial markets is the key to long-term growth and to reducing poverty and income gaps. India ranks 53^rd out of 121 countries surveyed.

At issue is nothing less than India’s future. Should the Indian state be a vehicle for groups to gain power who use it to further their own narrow ends? This approach seems likely to weaken and perhaps invite the destruction of India’s democracy.

Or should the Indian state of the future be a mechanism to protect the freedoms and rights of individuals living under a general law with shared allegiance to a secular state? If so, there is a better chance that India’s democracy will survive and more of its people can prosper.

India 'Loses 10m Female Births'

From the "BBC" magazine article linked here

More than 10m female births in India may have been lost to abortion and sex selection in the past 20 years, according to medical research.

Researchers in India and Canada for the Lancet journal said prenatal selection and selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000 girls a year.

Their research was based on a national survey of 1.1m households in 1998.

The researchers said the "girl deficit" was more common among educated women but did not vary according to religion.

The unusual gender balance in India has been known about for some time.

In most countries, women slightly outnumber men, but separate research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.

Ultrasound

The latest research is by Prabhat Jha of St Michael's Hospital at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Rajesh Kumar of the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Research in Chandigarh, India.

They found that there was an increasing tendency to select boys when previous children had been girls.

The sex ratio is so skewed in some states, men cannot find brides

In cases where the preceding child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys in the next birth was 759 to 1,000.

This fell even further when the two preceding children were both girls. Then the ratio for the third child born was just 719 girls to 1,000 boys.

However, for a child following the birth of a male child, the gender ratio was roughly equal.

Prabhat Jha said conservative estimates in the research suggested half a million girls were being lost each year.

"If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10m missing female births would not be unreasonable."

'Shameful'

Sex selective abortions have been banned in India for more than a decade.

HAVE YOUR SAY This just means that girls will be far more sought after in future Christian Tiburtius, Reading

Experts in India say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors.

It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm.

The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability - a bride's dowry can cripple a poor family financially.

The BBC's Jill McGivering says the problem is complicated by advances in technology. Ultrasound machines must be officially registered but many are now so light and portable, they are hard to monitor.

Although doctors in India must not tell couples the sex of a foetus, in practice, some just use coded signals instead, our correspondent says.

Last year the well-known religious leader and social activist, Swami Agnivesh, began a campaign across five northern and western states against female foeticide."There's no other form of violence that's more painful, more abhorrent, more shameful," he said.

MILLIONAIRES On the street

MILLIONAIRES On the street :from The Times of India

A hawker who owns cars, a beggar who owns three houses, a sweeper who runs a company. In Indian cities there are happy endings

Then: Chaatwala
Now: Chaatwala with a Mercedes
Tucked away in a tiny bylane near UPSC in Delhi are a group of "Coco-Cola" umbrellas that are usually swarmed by hordes who are relishing the transitory joys of junk food. Brothers Jagdish and Gopal Das, along with two other brothers, run this roadside shop that comedian Mehmood used to frequent once. “We manage to earn enough to go home and eat one square meal,” says Gopal Dayal vainly trying to achieve modesty. When he is reminded that his family owns a Mercedes, Gopal mumbles, “ Hamare pitaji ke paas Mercedes hai, par woh to ab purani baat hai. (My father has a Mercedes but that’s an old story).”
Despite the success of the shop, the brothers lived under the constant fear of being uprooted by the municipality. “MCD has allotted us land near the garbage dump not far from here. Business dropped, so we came back,” says Gopal.

Then: Beggar
Now: Beggar who has investments
Sambhaji Kale has Rs 40,000 hard cash in the bank, a few thousands in investments, a flat in Mumbai suburb, Virar, two houses and a plot in Solapur. Kale, his wife and their four children beg at traffic signals. They make about Rs 1,000 a day but live in some wooden boxes near the Khar signal. Their Virar flat has been let out, chiefly because commuting from Virar to Mumbai’s nerve centres would have added to their expense.
The Kales enjoy a fair bit of adulation among their ilk. Everyone knows them well, even the postman who never fails to bring them letters and other correspondence from the bank to their wooden boxes on the wayside.

Then: Peon
Now: Peon who drives
It’s not clear how many cars the Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai is entitled to but one of his peons has three. Rajesh Naik, 29, came to Mumbai from Sindhudurg five years ago. Now he owns two Tata Indicas and a second-hand Sumo. He had procured the vehicles on loan with the intention of hiring them out. He gets more than fifteen bookings per month and every booking fetches him about Rs 5,000, probably more than his pay. He has already paid off the loan of one of the Indicas, and hopes to pay the other by this year-end.
It’s hard to understand why he does not quit his peon job. “I will never leave it because it gives me respect and security.”

Then: Parking attendants
Now: Crorepatis
This story may not have the poignancy of urban toil but it still shows how Indian cities can make dreams come true. Six months ago, Patel brothers Vinubhai, 51, Girish, 45, and Chandrakant, 43, handed out parking tickets and sold paan outside a multiplex in Ahmedabad. Then one fine day, the sweeping multiplex culture suddenly took them to unexpected wealth. Their ancestral land on the Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway, that used to be worth nothing much, sold for Rs 60 crore.
Now the brothers are waiting for their chartered accountant to help them make investments, and “help us avoid taxes”.

Then: Sweeper
Now: Owner of a housekeeping company
Bhagiram Tank likes to call himself “zero”. That was what he was in 1965 when he left Ghaziabad as a 15-year-old. His father was a cleaner at the Radio Club in Mumbai and Bhagiram replaced him. He cleaned bathrooms, kitchens, the swimming pool and the wedding hall.
Very soon he branched out to providing organised cleaning services as a smalltime contractor. Today, 30 big corporate houses including Pepsi, Modicare, Raymond, Essar, Procter & Gamble, Lupin and Chemtex are his clients. Tank now employs around 800 people at his Unique Housekeeping, and has diversified into the security business with a former army commando. He owns a two-bedroom flat in Kandivli and drives a Tata Sumo. “I never lost sight of my responsibilities. The only fantasy I had was to undergo plastic surgery and look handsome, but my doctor talked me out of it,” he says, laughing.

Then: Vada Pav hawker
Now: Earns Rs 3 lakh per month
“I am busy now, Come on Saturday,” Ashok Manohar Satam says blandly, when asked for an interview. On any weekday, from 9.30 in the morning till 9.30 in the night, Satam has no time for conversation. He is busy doing brisk business at his vada pav stall near the Central Telegraph Office opposite Flora Fountain in Mumbai.
Thirty five years ago, Satam and his three brothers helped their postman father who ran the stall only in the evenings. The vada pav cost 50 paise then and they managed to sell about 150 a day. Now, Satam sells about 2,000 vada pavs a day at Rs 5 a piece. Satam’s business has been growing at 10% per annum since the last few years. “Mumbai has a lot of prosperity now. More crowds, more people, more wealth,” he says.
Once his family of eight used to live in a one-room tenement, the kind of place from where most of Mumbai emerges for air. Now his family has moved into four flats, all in the same building. His 22-year-old son is studying hotel management, and a younger son is pursuing a science degree in Ruparel College.


CLEAN SWEEPER
BHAGIRAM TANK
USED TO BE A SWEEPER. NOW HE RUNS A HOUSE CLEANING AGENCY AND DRIVES A TATA SUMO. ONLY ONE WISH REMAINS UNFULFILLED. “I WANTED TO UNDERGO A PLASTIC SURGERY AND LOOK HANDSOME. BUT MY DOCTOR TALKED ME OUT OF IT.”








BREAD AND BUTTER
ASHOK SATAM
MAKES RS 3 LAKH A MONTH SELLING VADA PAV AT FLORA FOUNTAIN. ANOTHER VADA PAVWALA IN MATUNGA OWNS A HYUNDAI ACCENT AND HIS CHILDREN GO TO AN ENGLISHMEDIUM RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL





THE BETELS MUCHHAD PAANWALA PREMSHANKAR TIWARI
2 HOUSES 2 ALSATIANS 1 WATCHMAN 1 WEBSITE “MANY CARS” THAT’S WHAT THE BROTHERS FROM U.P. OWN AFTER SELLING PAANS IN MUMBAI