Sushil Kumar Haldar

Economic Growth in India Revisited

This article tries to examine the relevance of the three distinct types of the growth models, namely, physical capital accumulation-led growth, export-led growth and Lucas-type human capital accumulation-led growth in India taking a long-time series data from 1950–51 to 2003–04. Employing the Johansens cointegration and error correction model, we find that human capital investment plays a crucial role both in the long run as well as in the short run. The export-led growth hypothesis is partially valid whereas the physical capital investment-led growth appears to be insignificant in our findings.

Socioeconomic Determinants of Child Malnutrition in India: Evidence from NFHS-III.

Prevalence of malnutrition among under-five children is very high in many developing countries in the World. As a step towards reducing the prevalence, there is need to identify the important determinants of malnutrition in the specific context. This study examines the important socioeconomic determinants of malnutrition among under-five children in India. Descriptive analyses and regression analyses are used to explore the determinants of child malnutrition from National Family Household Survey-III, 2005-06 data on around 38,000 children from all parts in India. Descriptive results of Z-Score (below -2 SD) indicate that 48.0%, 42.5% and 20.89% of the sample children under five were stunted, underweight and wasted respectively. Regression analyses (OLS and Ordered Probabilistic models) show that the significant determinants of malnutrition are age and birth history of child, mother’s education, mother’s underweight, wealth of the households, household size and presence of toilet in the households. To reduce the present high rate of malnutrition, the study suggests the targeting of women with education programmes and provision of healthy environment.

Conflict, Displacement and Inequality of Opportunities

Various factors affect the ability of internally displaced persons (IDPs) to achieve socioeconomic stability. Aid and repatriation attempts have a short-term impact, whereas opportunities like access to education and healthcare have a long-term impact. Thus, a measurement of inequality of opportunity is needed in order to formulate an appropriate development policy that can achieve socioeconomic stability. The objective of this study is, therefore, to measure inequality of opportunity affecting a community in India that has been displaced for a period of less than twenty years by ethnic conflict. A field survey revealed that IDPs were more deprived than non-IDPs. Inequality of opportunity has been measured using a D-Index, and determinants of the inequality of opportunity have been identified.

Determinants of Exports of Information Technology in India

The information technology (IT) sector has contributed significantly to the economic growth in India and is one of the fastest-growing export-oriented sectors in India. The objective of this article is to explore the determinants of exports of IT companies of India from 2000 to 2012 using company-level data. Applying ordinary panel data regression, the article finds that world demand and real effective exchange rate have expected signs on company exports. Surprisingly, foreign capital, which played a crucial role in IT sector development in India, has a negative coefficient, highlighting substitution relation between export and domestic demands. The dynamic panel data regression exhibits persistence of exports which acts as a moderating factor on demand fluctuations and its high impact. Further, the dynamic panel estimations clearly show the predominant influence of past exports on gross domestic product (GDP) growth in India, which makes world demand, standardized as relative to India’s GDP, inconsequential for its future exports.

Principles of Allocating Development Grant at the Sub-National Level in India: A Suggested Methodology

One of the major objectives of our national planning process is to reduce inequality in various dimensions of level of living of the people scattered around different geographical regions. States and districts are considered as administrative units at sub-national and sub-state levels, respectively. The national as well as state governments sometimes provide special grants to specific states as well as specific districts based on certain development indicators in order to ensure social justice or to attain inclusive growth. But, the principle of allocating fund does suffer from various grounds like arbitrary selection of the indicators, equal weights assigned to the indicators, unclear objectives, etc. Keeping in mind, the regional backwardness as multidimensional in nature, we propose here a methodology of a rational allocation rule of development grants which is based on principal component techniques. This principle can be applied at the disaggregate level if the disaggregate data on different dimensions of development vis-a-vis deprivations are available. This allocating rule simultaneously addresses two issues: the amount of fund to be released to each geographical unit as well as the necessity of including each development parameter considered so far in the above-mentioned devolution methodology. Our proposed methodology tries to capture inclusivity, and it is expected to be helpful to the development practitioners at both policy levels and academics.