Performance and Determinants of India’s GDP Since 1950: A Quantitative Analysis

The planned economic development during the 40 years period (1950-91) has showed a mixed scenario. For example per annum growth in GDP during first fifteen years 1950-65 was found at 4 percent while during the period 1967-80 it declined marginally and stood at merely 3.45 percent per annum. However the decade of eighties which witnessed improvement in Agricultural sector, Mining & Manufacturing sector, Service sector and Export sector has resulted in 5.46 per cent per annum growth in the GDP. In this connection it is significant to observe that the overall growth in GDP during the period 1950 to 1991 was not very impressive due to constant pulls and pressures. In the early 1991, Indian economy faced several economic crises, like fiscal imbalances, mounting inflationary pressures and severe balance of payment crisis etc. The congress government, which assumed office at the end of June 1991, responded quickly to these problems. As a rescue measure, a series of new policy measures were announced in July 1991 by the government of India. These are also known as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) of 1991.The major thrust of present paper is to evaluate the performance (for the period 1950 to 2006) as well as determinants (for the period 1975 to 2006) of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Indian economy.