Introduction

High rates of growth have characterized developments in the Indian economy over the last few years, with a growth rate of close to 9 per cent for three consecutive years from 2005–6 to 2007–8, surpassing all expectations (Government of India 2007). Whereas GDP growth amounted to less than 4 per cent per year during 1965–74 (in fact since Indian independence in 1947), it has been close to 6 per cent per year since 1985, an increase in the growth rate by one-and-a-half times. Even more significant is the increase in the annual rate of GDP per capita growth from 1.4 per cent during 1965–74 to 4.3 per cent during 1995–2004, a threefold increase, resulting partly from a slowing down of population growth (Rao et al. 2008).

This remarkable growth, often claimed as evidence for the success of a pro-market strategy that has led to an expansion of choices and opportunities, is viewed as a key characteristic of the ‘new India’. Yet concerns about the inclusiveness of the growth process remain, pointing to the persistence of an ‘old India’, with not all sectors, states or sections of the population able to equally access these new, market-based opportunities. The interests of urban private capital (big business) and rural social elites (often newly emergent caste-based groups) continue to be met at the cost of providing education, health or extension services to the poor, confronted with both rising prices and exclusion from the new regime of accumulation (Corbridge and Harriss 2000; Kohli 2006; Bardhan 1998).