Has India's poorest and most lawless state turned the corner? If you believe the government of the northern state of Bihar, the answer appears to be in the affirmative. According to it, Bihar clocked up a giddy growth rate of 11.03% in 2008-2009. This would make it India's second fastest growing state economy, just behind the industrially-developed western state of Gujarat. Not so long ago, Bihar was written off as a...
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Bihar’s miraculous economic growth: Myth or reality?
A section of the media seems to be mighty impressed with Bihar’s miraculous (11.03%) average annual growth during the 2004-05 to 2008-09, supposedly akin to that of Gujarat (11.05%) but is there a catch in this stunning statistics? (See the graph below). While the media has quoted the Gross State Domestic Product at factor cost (at constant 1999-2000 prices) as provided by the Central Statistical Organization (CSO), but the corresponding...
More »The growth redux by Arjun Sengupta
The New Year began with very good news about the Indian economy. During the last five years, 2004 to 2009, India’s most backward states have shown remarkable growth. Bihar, which grew at 4.5 per cent a year between 2001 and 2005, showed a growth rate of 11.3 per cent between 2005 and 2009. Similarly, Odisha increased its growth performance from 4.94 to 8.74 per cent between these two periods; Jharkhand...
More »New potatoes to cost less
Patna-based Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI) has developed three varieties of potato as a New Year gift for farmers and potato consumers who were hit by the rise in the price of the commodity last year. The CPRI scientists have named the new varieties as kufary suya, pushkar and khyati. These offer better productivity and will be richer in protein and iron. They will have the average level of sugar. The principal...
More »Keeping it going
The recently released figures from the Central Statistical Organisation that estimate how fast India’s states have been growing have undoubtedly been the biggest economic news of the new year. There are many fascinating aspects to the new numbers: for example, that Bihar is the country’s second-fastest growing state, growing at 11.03 per cent annually in the years since 2004-05 — only 0.02 per cent behind Gujarat, a more familiar success...
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