Year: 2018 | Month: March | Volume 63 | Issue 1
Growth, Economic Instability and Popular Aspirations in South Asia: Some Leads for Public Policy
DOI:10.30954/0424-2513.2018.00150.11
Abstract:
Global dynamics in the economic front have undergone several noteworthy changes in recent decades. At one hand, there is an increasing interest of the global finance capital in some prominent and emerging economies of South (emphasis ours). We see an increasing systemic resilience in these emerging economies towards shocks and economic fluctuations that have frequented the developed part of the globe more often than ever before. Many ascribe this resilience to an increasing recognition of the national governments of the Southern economies towards popular aspirations reflected in the manifestos of the ruling forces as well as formulation of pro-people policies than ever before. While this is something that needs attention, we also observe some contradictions of the growth process within the so called ‘emerging south’. While the income of the nations is on the rise, the regional imbalances also are growing. At the same time, the deficit in some key development indicators such as health and education are also widening. Such a scenario is more so true in the context of countries of the South Asian region. Some flagship programmes and policies in the most South Asian countries clearly reflect the popular aspirations and development needs in these countries. The political forces in these countries have also become proactive in raising issues of development more prominently in their election campaigns and political literature. The present paper attempts to explain some such contradictions in the context of South Asia and based on the analysis of country specific data on income, health, education and other indicators from the global database of world development indicators (WDI) and with the help of vector auto-regression (VAR) method of analysis, the paper seeks to establish some linkages in these variables in the changing global scenario.
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