How to make a billion people rich
(This is the full text of my short lecture as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader at the Young Global Leaders Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 4, 2017. The image is from the British artist Banksy.)
I come from a country where we have spent the last 25 years trying to make everybody a little richer.
Our GDP grew four times to cross $2 trillion dollars during the last two and a half decades. Our foreign reserves have grown from just under $6 billion to more than $360 billion. But those just numbers until you consider that between 2004–11 alone, India pulled out 138 million people from poverty.
So what’s really going on?
Here are a few things you should know — but isn’t often commonly understood — about interesting subaltern revolution that’s happening in India:
Half of India’s GDP comes from what is known as the ‘informal’ sector. These are small and medium-sized mostly unregistered companies that provide nearly 90% of employment in India. Since 1991, when India started opening its economy, almost always this ‘informal’ sector has grown faster than the formal sector — so all that you see about the Indian stock market, its major companies, its information technology prowess — beneath all that is a buzzing, humming. incredible engine of growth that most people don’t…
