Finance & economics | Free exchange

How India could become an Asian tiger

The world’s most selective bureaucracy is struggling to make it happen

Illustration of the Indian flag with a workman wheeling away its wheel
Illustration: Álvaro Bernis

Is India achieving its potential? In the year to the third quarter of 2023, the country grew at a blistering rate of 8.4%. Over the next half-decade it is expected to expand at 6.5% a year, which would make it the world’s fastest-growing big economy. So far, so good. The problem, as critics point out, is that China, Japan and South Korea all expanded at 10% or so a year during their periods of rapid growth. Part of the reason for India’s less impressive figures is a slowdown in globalisation. But a new book by Karthik Muralidharan of the University of California, San Diego, called “Accelerating India’s Development”, argues that the crucial barrier to faster development is a lack of “state capacity”.

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The importance of leadership”

From the March 30th 2024 edition

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