The country, once a supplier of British tea and cotton, now has a diversified economy with the majority of activity and growth coming from the service industry. India is expected to become a high-middle income country by In , after gaining independence from Britain, India formed a centrally-planned economy also known as a command economy.
With a centrally planned economy, the government makes the majority of economic decisions regarding the manufacturing and the distribution of products. The government focused on developing its heavy industry sector, but this emphasis was eventually deemed unsustainable. In , India began to loosen its economic restrictions and an increased level of liberalization led to growth in the country's private sector. Today, India is considered a mixed economy: the private and public sectors co-exist and the country leverages international trade.
Citizens can choose their own occupations and start their own private enterprises. However, in certain areas of the economy, such as defense, power, banking, and other industries, the government maintains a monopoly. However, analysts have pointed out that this fall should not be equated with a decrease in production. The agricultural industry in India currently faces some problems.
First, the industry is not as efficient as it could be: millions of small farmers rely on monsoons for the water necessary for their crop production. Agricultural infrastructure is not well developed, so irrigation is sparse and agricultural product is at risk of spoilage because of a lack of adequate storage facilities and distribution channels.
Despite this, production is increasing. Today, India is a leading producer of lemons, oilseeds, bananas, mangoes and papayas, wheat, rice, sugar cane, many vegetables, tea, cotton, and silkworms among others. While forestry is a relatively small contributor to the country's GDP, it is a growing sector and is responsible for producing fuel, wood, gums, hardwood, and furniture.
Chemicals are big business in India; The petrochemical industry, which first entered the Indian industrial scene in the s, experienced rapid growth in the s and s. India also mines a large number of gems and common minerals including iron ore, bauxite, and gold along with asbestos, uranium, limestone, and marble.
Oil and gas were extracted at a rate of Over the past 60 years, the service industry in India has increased from a fraction of the GDP to approximately BPO in India, which started around the mids, has grown by leaps and bounds. The retail sector in India is huge. But it's not just apparel, electronics, or traditional consumer retail that is booming; agricultural retail, which is important in an inflation-conscious country like India, is also significant.
However, in recent years, the issue of agricultural wastage has come to the forefront. Reports suggest there is little storage for Indian agricultural products, and experts believe that the solution to the massive waste issue is a combination of government policy, technology, and infrastructure.
By Forbes India. Get the latest stories, videos, and podcasts from Forbes India directly in your inbox every Saturday. Email Address.
Thank you for your comment, we value your opinion and the time you took to write to us! Forbes India 30 Under 30 How we found our under 30 achievers in an unforgiving year.
I think of Katherine Boo's best-seller, "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers," an exquisitely detailed chronicle of life inside a Mumbai slum. What I took away from that book was a realization that poor people in slums such as Amina's are not necessarily jostling to become India's next billionaire. They just want to fare better than their neighbors, move up a notch, however small, in the money ladder -- not unlike any of us who strive for a better house, a shinier car, a good education for our kids.
But Amina never moved up and that is perhaps her great sadness; that she was widowed by a man who she believes had neither the verve nor the physical strength to improve his lot in life. I spot Amina's granddaughter, Manisha, and she takes me to her. Amina's room is cave-like, with no windows. A wooden cot sits up on bricks to keep it dry when the monsoons intrude.
A television set, circa , perches precariously on a shelf. Scratched aluminum pots adorn a wall facing the bed as though they were priceless works of art. Rent controls in the slum are the only reason her son-in-law, who lives nearby, can afford to keep her here.
She shares the space with her grandchildren and, sometimes, a daughter who lives in Kashmir. People like Amina inspire economists such as Devinder Sharma to push India to take an alternate path to development. He is a bit of a firebrand, on a crusade to highlight the plight of India's poor. He argues that India's tax structure and other government incentives benefit its wealthiest industrialists -- such as billionaire Sanjiv Goenka, the builder of Quest Mall.
In business circles, Sharma is called anti-development. Indian entrepreneurs have their own ideas on why there is enormous inequality. They point to government corruption and inefficiency: India still ranks high on Transparency International's corruption perception index , at 79 out of countries, with 1 Denmark being the least corrupt.
The United States ranks Other factors feed the wealth gap, adds Raj Desai, an expert on economic development at Georgetown University. It matters whether you are a man or a woman, whether you belong to the untouchable caste. It matters where you live -- in a remote village or in an urban center.
Someone like Amina, Desai says, is better off than the rural poor. I take off my shoes and walk into Amina's room. She is on the floor and cannot stand up by herself to give me her usual warm hug. She gained weight after arthritis took hold of her body and limited her mobility. She's in her 80s now and has managed to live beyond the average age of death in India: I sit down on the cement floor to meet her eyes. I had told her ahead of time that I would be taking her on an outing.
Amina hobbles to another room to get dressed and returns wearing a new orange and white printed cotton sari, the kind I know will run for at least the first dozen washings. She is barefoot, the cracks on her feet blackened by dirt. We walk to the road and get into the car I have borrowed.
She tells me she has ridden in a car or a taxi a few times in her life, mostly when her employers arranged for the ride. The car meanders down the road that Amina traversed by foot every day. Finally, we arrive at Quest, where the juxtaposition of old and new is jarring. Outside the mall, I watch Tapan Datta crack an egg at his roadside food stall, as he has for the past 15 years. He recently raised the price of his omelet to 10 rupees, or 14 cents. Inside the mall, a veggie quesadilla at the American chain Chili's costs 25 times more.
This budget is a crucial one for the sitting government, as PM Modi will seek to return to power a second time on the back of what analysts are already guessing will be a populist budget.
The Union Budget Union budget is the annual financial statement of expenditure and receipts of the government of India for the financial year from April, as required by the Article of the Constitution. But like any budget — yours or mine — what we need to also understand is how much money there is, and how much of it can be spent and on what. And that first question is what we attempt to address today. What is the source of income for the massive joint family that is India?
How does India make its money? In our inaugural podcast ahead of the Union Budget likely to be presented on the 1 st of February , that is the question we will ask — a question Aunties and Uncles ask before making any marital alliance for their children — what is the source of your income?
The Indian government, like most others in the world, earns money, i. The receipt budget, which lays down the details of the sources of earnings, is also part of the budget presentation. I deserve better! In , the government gained Rs Broadly considered, the government makes money through tax revenues, non-tax revenues, and capital receipts. Here we have to understand something called Gross Tax Revenue — it comprises of the following components numbers are FY18 estimates : Corporation tax 5.
The share of the income tax contributing the GTR is coming down progressively. In the year , corporation tax made 31 percent and income tax made In the year , corporation tax made 21 percent and income tax made 14 percent of the total tax revenue. What about non-tax revenues? These come from the money earned by the government other than the tax routes, as the name would have it.
Revenue collected from sale of spectrum forms the second largest part of the non-tax revenue. The remainder of the non-tax revenue is collected from royalty on inland petroleum, tolls collected from national highways, interests, etc. Non-tax revenue constitutes about 11 percent of the total receipts. Then we have Capital Receipts: Collection of capital receipts come from borrowings and other liabilities.
0コメント