Economic Growth and Sustainable Development in India

In our project we plan to explore both environmental and social issues related to economic development and societal transformation. Both issues are highly relevant to Indian development discussions. The country is presently experiencing record high econom ic growth and it is an ambition of the government to combine growth with redistributive and environmental policies. India is the world's second largest country and the largest democracy. The question of whether India succeeds in generating shared growth w ith participatory elements is a question of first order importance. In our project we have singled out a few of the many research topics. We have chosen topics that we think are important and where we think we have something to contribute. The subprojec t ?Assessing social and economic development? is concerned with the measurement of economic and social development in India. The ambition is to measure performance along several dimensions, such as poverty and inequality. The subproject "Employment guara ntee" is concerned with the efficiency of welfare programs in a situation with significant surplus labor. It has been claimed that universal welfare arrangements are only viable in rich countries, but India now guarantees every rural household 100 working days at minimum. We want to explore the workings of such a large scale welfare program in a developing country. The subproject "India in the global climate negotiations" is concerned with India's role in the international climate negotiations. A large fraction of the growth in greenhouse gas emissions are coming from China and India. In spite of this their involvement in the climate gas control negotiations has until recently only been limited. In this subproject we will look at ways of involving a lar ge developing country like India in the international climate treaties.