Development Strategies for Growth with Equity: The South Asian Experience

During the 1950s, which saw the rise of development economics as a separate sub-discipline of economics, constraints imposed by the levels of domestic savings and investment on economic growth of developing countries were at the center of discussions and debates on development strategies. Later on, toward the late 1960s and early 1970s, the concerns of development economists and also international agencies shifted to issues relating to employment, income distribution and poverty, as some of the early optimism about the capital-centered approach to the development process did not always produce the desired results. However, more recently from the late 1970s onwards, debates on development strategies have concentrated more on issues relating to structural adjustments, trade and other types of economic reforms, including the role of the market mechanism. This shift in emphasis in recent years, though arising out of objective circumstances, is rather unfortunate in more than one sense since, in my opinion, the objectives of generating more employment opportunities and the eradication of poverty have, if anything, greater relevance today for many developing countries, especially those in South Asia.