China and India are the two most populous countries in the world and now also two of the fastest growing. By sheer virtue of the fact that China and India are home to 2.4 billion people - two-fifths of the world's population - the rapid growth of their economies has far-reaching implications not just for global living standards and poverty reduction but also for competitiveness and distribution of income in the rest of the world. Commensurate with their economic progress, there has been a surge of interest in the nature and implications of China and India's economic growth. There are several apparent similarities in the development process of China and India: both are home to ancient civilizations that have bequeathed distinctive attitudes, institutions, and traditions. Both have very large populations. Both have performed well economically for more than two decades. However there are important differences that can be seen beneath the surface. China started the current reform process in 1978 - that is, almost fifteen years before India. The two countries have very different political systems. Their development models differ fundamentally as well. China has opened up much more than India to foreign trade and foreign direct investment, while India has a better developed banking system. Growth in the two countries has been driven by different sectors - Chinese growth by manufacturing and Indian growth by services. This volume brings together some of the best research on issues related to the growth experience of China and India and places these issues in a comparative perspective. It contains papers written by some of the leading academic and experts in the world on issues ranging from the roles of China and India in the world economy, contrasts in their development experience, and challenges to sustaining growth.

A specially designed computable general equilibrium model is used to analyze the effects of recent policy reforms in the Indian economy

Do financial sector reforms necessarily result in expansion of credit to the private sector? How does bank ownership affect the availability of credit to the private sector? Empirical evidence is somewhat mixed on these issues. We use the Indian experience with liberalization of the financial sector to inform this debate. Using bank-level data from 1991-2007, we ask whether public and private banks deployed resources freed up by reduced state preemption to increase credit to the private sector. We find that even after liberalization, public banks allocated a larger share of their assets to government securities than did private banks. Crucially, we also find that public banks were more responsive in allocating relatively more resources to finance the fiscal deficit even during periods when state pre-emption (measured in terms of the requirement to hold government securities as a share of assets) formally declined. These findings suggest that in developing countries, where alternative channels of financing may be limited, government ownership of banks, combined with high fiscal deficits, may limit the gains from financial liberalization.

Human Development in India is an invaluable report for policymakers, researchers, non-governmental organizations, international agencies, and interested readers---from India and abroad---who wish to know more about one of the fastest growing economies in the world. --Book Jacket.