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India to topple Japan as world's 3rd-largest economy
- Triumvark 15y agoIndia has almost 10 times the population: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+india+%2F+population+of+japan http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+india+%2F...
- brador 15y agoSo it's basically quantity over quality?
- sagarun 15y agoI am sure India has improved a lot! But India has lot of other problems, 1. India has a family centric society , where welfare of the family gets priority than the welfare of the nation, which is one of the factor for rampant corruption (IMO). 2. The infrastructure is poor. 3. The divide between rich and poor is high! (income inequality) 4. The Public sector is very slow to respond to the growing needs of infrastructure! They have no clue at all! 5. There is still caste system in rural India, where they don't respect fellow country men as a human being. 6. The politics is only for the rich and heirs of powerful politicians (the parliament is filled with sons and daughters of old politicians read:family business) India has a long way to go!
- tsycho 15y agoI agree with most of your points, but I don't think #1 (family-centric society) is the problem, or even a direct driver of corruption. If you were referring to nepotism, then I think that exists all over the world. An overall corrupt climate just makes it easier to practice nepotism.
- mynameishere 15y agoI know nothing about India but the "family-centric" stuff is easier to understand as a problem if you phrase it "clannish". And that is actually a huge problem in some areas.
- Symmetry 15y agoIts a problem because if you don't ask for a bribe, you're selfishly throwing away money you could you use help out your cousin just out of fear of getting punished. And in India you probably do have some cousin who needs the money because their car broke down/their child is getting married/whatever.
- mihaifm 15y agoIn terms of nominal GDP they are still far behind (India 10th place, Japan 3rd), but they score well at PPP due to low costs of living. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...
- csomar 15y agoThere is something that I'm missing. World Bank says that India GDP is $1.377 trillion, Wikipedia too. But there is this "PPP" thing, which turns India GDP to $4 trillion. Which one is more relevant in this case?
- adamt 15y agoThe PPP figure is irrelevant in this case. Purchasing Power Parity GDP figures adjusts the GDP to the cost of living. It has most contextual value when comparing the GDP per capita. PPP GDP per Capita is effectively a metric of the mean wealth relative to cost of living in the country. To compare total GDP figures on a PPP basis for two countries, and when one country has 10x as many people doesn't really make sense. What this comparison says is: (Total GDP of Japan/Cost of Living in Japan) < (Total GDP of India/Cost of Living in India). The Japanese economy is still 3x bigger (in terms of total GDP), and has 10x higher PPP GDP per capita, or about 30x the GDP per capita.
- train_robber 15y agoTo put it really simplistically : From the perspective of everything within India - PPP is what matters; because it takes into consideration the cost of living. But from the perspective of everything outside India - the absolute figure is what matters.
- ashishgandhi 15y agoPPP is only relevant if your typical purchase is similar to that of the basket of goods used to calculate PPP. An iPod or a Toyota will still cost the same - irrespective of PPP - since they are global goods. (In fact due to India's laws they become much costlier in India with around ~30% increase if you convert money.)
- train_robber 15y agoTrue if you consider global goods. But for things that are produced within India PPP is relevant. Then again - it doesn't make sense comparing PPP when you are trying to rank economies on size.
- HSO 15y agoterrible headline. my dictionary says: to topple: verb [ no obj. ] overbalance or become unsteady and fall slowly [ with obj. ] cause to fall in such a way india rising does not cause japan to fall, in any way. also, there's a certain triumphalism in such headlines that is, i contend, unworthy of a confident nation and of HN. last but not least, the measure used is highly flawed, given that the headline seems to aim at india's rising "standing" in world affairs. when you do that, the actual exchange rate counts, not PPP. and there, the picture looks a little different. just to be clear: none of which is to detract from india's great progress in the last 10 or 20 years, or from its talented population. it's just that this article/headline strikes me as cheap.
- sassyboy 15y agoThat sort of sensationalist headline is expected from the indiatimes group.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- pnathan 15y agoAnd what media groups are reputable in India?
- mouly 15y agothehindu.com is reputed. They are independent and practice quality journalism
- ashishgandhi 15y agoThey may be the lesser evil, but I would still say they are nothing close to what NYTimes is. (If you are looking for reputation on that scale.) Moreover I've often seen the Times of India publishing most of BBC (India region) stories from the day before. Might as well follow that.
- ashishgandhi 15y agoIndia to finally (hopefully) "topple" war-troublled Iraq as the world's 128th country in terms of income per capita by purchasing power parity. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_...) Or Mongolia for the 133rd position, depends upon who's list you look at. Don't forget the huge income inequality.
- jagira 15y agoPer capita income is extremely low in India. But things are improving. India's growth is mainly because of growth of service industry, manufacturing and modern agriculture techniques. The countries that you have mentioned have higher per capita income because of huge natural resources and less population. Iraq -> Huge Oil reserves / Small population Mongolia -> Huge mineral resources / tiny population
- ashishgandhi 15y agoThe countries I mention here are because they are directly above India on that list. I'm hoping you are not trying to say you need a lot of natural resources and less population to be rich. Singapore -> Almost no resources, pretty dense population. Singapore is much much ahead.
- thewisedude 15y agoOK...like many countries with big population...there is significant income inequality. 400 of the richest americans have more wealth than 150 million americans. Getting back to your point -> So how should that affect the fact that India is about to be the 3rd largest economy?
- brainless 15y agoSitting in India, and looking at that headline makes me feel journalism is absolutely wrong here, or at least in India Times. There is no doubt India will become one of the richest economies, but right now we have so many problems we must fix. This headline gives the illusion that everything is just about perfect.
- thewisedude 15y agoThere will always be problems. You think USA does not have significant problems ? You think Europe does not have significant problems? I dont think any country at any time was "perfect" and I dont think the headline is conveying that in any form
- dr_ 15y agoI'm not sure what it means to be a large economy anymore. If you roam around any of the cities in India, you see nothing but a third world nation, with rampant poverty and horrific infrastructure. And of course in the villages, it's even worse. And businesses apparently have had difficulty dealing with the corruption in the Indian government. The country has such a long way to go before it can stand on the same footing as the US or even some of the European countries whose economies it is supposedly surpassing.
- byw 15y agoUsually when they refer to the size of the economy they imply the leverage it has on the world stage because of its collective wealth. From the average individual's perspective, it's more about per capita GDP.
- AndrewDucker 15y agoLarge doesn't necessarily mean a lot for standard of living, because India's population is also very large, so the amount of economy per person is a lot smaller. India's GDP might make it 4th (by Purchasing Power Parity) or 10th (nominally), but per person it's down at 129th. (Figures via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP... )
- josefresco 15y agoFrom what I read you're accurate. You could also make the argument that you could replace the word "India" with "China" and not be too far off in describing another huge economy.
- amolsarva 15y agoOne point many commenters are missing. Yes the country is plainly less rich than Japan and the first world, and it shows in big cities. Even comparing big cities in China to India there is a big gap. But here is what you are missing: as total wealth in India is growing there are indeed some places (which the casual tourist driving around will not see) centered in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi that are super rich. One way to spy on it is visit one of the "five star" hotels like JW Marriots etc -- they are numerous, massive, and full of quite rich people with loads of servants and fancy places to live. By the way, you can find loads of disgustingly miserable poor places in the rich USA too. Maybe they all have sewers and electricity but that's about all that separates parts of the rural US (deep south) or bad urban poverty (right nearby me in NYC) and some villages in India.
- byoung2 15y agoBy the way, you can find loads of disgustingly miserable poor places in the rich USA too. Maybe they all have sewers and electricity but that's about all that separates parts of the rural US (deep south) or bad urban poverty (right nearby me in NYC) and some villages in India. Even the poorest place in the US has access to electricity, clean water, sewage disposal, trash disposal, law enforcement, emergency response, phone service, broadcast television, postal service, and the list goes on. This is definitely not true in India or China, and there is a long way to go before they reach that level.
- amolsarva 15y agoYou are right about most of that being available in the US (except emergency response - but I don't know how quickly you will get rescued in rural US places, or even parts of NYC if you read the papers) But you are wrong about most of this not being available in most places in India. Maybe sewage isn't great and emergency response sucks, and phone is wireless not landline. But there is definitely postal service and TV! You must be kidding. But the main point --> a few bits of infrastructure like what you list does not make people happy, comfortable or rich. You can be very poor and miserable here in the US and many millions of people would be much better off if they lived in Mumbai, where at least stuff is cheaper to buy
- dramaticus3 15y agoFrom the paper that brought you http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-10-28/man-woman/28271451_1_rapist-small-town-girls-victim http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-10-28/man-w... Should a woman marry her rapist? KALPANA SHARMA, Oct 28, 2010, 12.00am IST When a rapist offers to marry the victim, one would think it's the perfect solution. But isn't this victimization of the victim all over again?
- dimmuborgir 15y agoWow lot of pessimism and cynicism here. > '...but per-capita income of India is so low' No one has said otherwise. Having a big economy has many advantages and India is expected to grow for decades to come. > '...but go to Indian cities and you'll see rampant poverty' So? Poor people migrate to cities in search of opportunities. Unlike China there is no mechanism in India to put restrictions on rural migrants. > '...gap between rich and poor in India is growing' Show me one country that is growing 5% or more where the gap between rich and poor is decreasing.
- rrrazdan 15y agoI see lots of comments about income inequality in India. I find them very amusing. Refer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equ.... You would see that India's income inequality is less than Switzerland, France and the Netherlands. The pressing problem in India right now is not income inequality. Its the lack of income, really. At this stage of development all India should worry about is earning wealth. Trying to redistribute that is a 'premature optimization'. :)
- jisaacstone 15y agoThis is an oversimplified perspective, though it does have some underlying truth. The issue of poverty reduction is a complex one. I reccomend anyone truly interested to read this World Bank comparison report from a couple years ago(pdf): http://elibrary.worldbank.org/deliver/5080.pdf?itemId=/content/workingpaper/10.1596/1813-9450-5080&mimeType=pdf http://elibrary.worldbank.org/deliver/5080.pdf?itemId=/conte... It is excellent. And here is the thrilling conclusion: “China clearly scores well on the pro-poor growth side of the card, but neither Brazil nor India do; in Brazil’s case for lack of growth and in India’s case for lack of poverty-reducing growth. Brazil scores well on the social policies side, but China and India do not; in China’s case progress has been slow in implementing new social policies more relevant to the new market economy (despite historical advantages in this area, inherited from the past regime) and in India’s case the bigger problems are the extent of capture of the many existing policies by non-poor groups and the weak capabilities of the state for delivering better basic public services.”
- prakashk 15y ago> At this stage of development all India should worry about is earning wealth. Trying to redistribute that is a 'premature optimization'. :) When do you think is the Right Time to start that "optimization"?
- tsotha 15y agoNever. Why would you assume it's the government's role to decide who has what?
- aita 15y agoI wonder how people of india are so happy when compared to developed nations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Planet_Index
- openforce 15y agoThats a different dimension. Happiness isn't related to the economy. People seldom realize this. The culture and workings of the society, the low benchmarks for satisfaction and happiness is what keeps them happy. The huge number of festivities also plays a part. :)
- jquery 15y agoHPI = (Self-reported happiness + Life Expectancy) / (Eco-footprint) ? Yeah, no. The HPI is not a measure of the happiness of a nation, it's a measure of self-reported happiness per unit of "imposition on nature." And according to that index, we should all strive to be like the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Columbia, and Cuba. No thanks.
- chakde 15y agoSustainability and environment count for something. Perhaps a lot. Self-reported happiness obviously counts for a lot. GDP does'nt take any of that into account.
- jquery 15y agoNor should it try, because it's an objective measure, whereas HPI is completely subjective measure. Apples and oranges. I'm also not convinced self-reported happiness is accurate across cultures. How do you control for cultural variations in the question "are you happy?" Diverse cultures have deep differences of understanding when approaching that question.
- chakde 15y agoWell what gets measured gets improved. What's subjective to you is pretty objective to me - the health impact of unhappiness, for example, will reflect in healthcare costs. Which btw makes up 15% of US GDP. Now is that even real GDP or just a manufactured problem - with doctors and lawers and insurance guys all making money off of health problems of consumers. See this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Comparison_-_Healthcare_spending_as_%25_GDP.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:International_Comparison_-...
- cottonseed 15y agoI think per-capita GDP is much more interesting than total GDP. Japan: 34k/yr, India: 3k/yr (source: wikipedia).
- pixpox30 15y agoTriumphalism without much actual substance. The Japanese have an amazing standard of living, superb infrastructure, world beating products and awesome tech. If you wander around a big city in India you'll see wild dogs and malnourished children, enormous shanty towns and slums. How this nationalistic rag called the india times can proclaim "victory" as having "toppled" Japan is beyond me. Also - claiming that Russia and India are coming to the aid of European countries is completely ridiculous. India currently receives £1billion + in aid from the UK. Having a "big" economy because there are 1 billion citizens within that economy doesn't mean anything in itself.
- digamber_kamat 15y agoAll this "large economy" chest beating is useless if you cant prevent a million deaths because of malnourishment.