Articles by Nirupam Bajpai

Economic Growth Nirupam Bajpai Jeffrey D Sachs We suggest a three-pronged approach to an enhanced growth strategy for India. The first prong is expanded growth. Here the lessons of Chirm are particularly instructive, since China achieved in the past 15 years the. kind of export-led growth that India could have achieved, but failed to achieve, because of poor public policies. The second prong is rural improvement, especially in the vast population of the Gangetic valley. India needs a specific strategy to bring modern economic growth to rural India, through a concerted campaign of infrastructure upgrading and appropriate re-design of state policy. The third prong is the maintenance of macroeconomic stability, to avoid the kind of crisis that pushed East Asia into economic collapse. The macroeconomic stakes have obviously been raised in the past year. India's macroeconomic policies will he under scrutiny as perhaps never before following the onset of the East Asian financial crisis.

Theory and Evidence Nirupam Bajpai Economic reforms are being undertaken almost throughout the developing world today. preceded in most of the countries, including India, by a fiscal and balance of payments crisis. It is argued that the reforms are guided by rules-of-thumb and the underlying general equilibrium model of the economy for which these standard rules apply is an unrealistic portrayal of most of the developing economies. The model holds good only under very restrictive assumptions. perhaps only for small economies and not large ones. Besides, while it is important to attain and maintain fiscal discipline, the IMF's approach has prolonged the process and invariably failed to yield the desired results.

Can the Two be Pursued Simultaneously?
Nirupam Bajpai Developing countries are undertaking structural reforms in the midst of macro-economic instability. While most of the discussions on economic reform see growth as more or less an assured product of appropriate stabilisation and reform policies, this paper argues that simultaneous attempts toward stabilisation and economic liberalisation may lead neither to macro stability nor to the restoration of sustainable growth. In fact, the objective of stabilisation is in conflict with the objective of re-igniting growth in the economy.

With the introduction of Structural Adjustment Loans the World Bank took over a new role, that of policy- based programme lending. In addition, to address sector-specific issues, the Bank introduced sector adjustment loans. An attempt has been made in this paper to identify and analyse the basic issues relating to the Bank's adjustment lending and to highlight some of the conflicting objectives of such lending.