What explains India’s modest improvements in social development outcomes even as the rate of growth has accelerated since the initiation of economic reforms? (2021, 15 Marks)
Since 1991 India has become one of the fastest-growing large economies — real GDP grew 7.7 per cent in 2025-26 — yet it ranks 130th of 193 on the Human Development Index (HDR 2025), and inequality shaves 30.7 per cent off its HDI value. The gap is explained less by economics than by the political economy of public action.
Why growth has not converted into capability
- Growth-mediated without support-led security: Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (An Uncertain Glory, 2013) argue that growth improves lives only when its revenues fund schooling, health and nutrition. India grew but neglected these, so poorer Bangladesh overtook it on several child-health and gender indicators.
- Low public spending: government health expenditure was only 1.84 per cent of GDP in 2021-22, below the National Health Policy 2017 target of 2.5 per cent; education remains short of the long-promised 6 per cent.
- Quality and state capacity: enrolment is near-universal, but only about a quarter of rural Class III children could read a Class II text (ASER 2024). Lant Pritchett’s “flailing state” (2009) — a capable head with weak frontline limbs — describes the delivery problem.
- The pattern of growth: services- and capital-led growth created few good jobs; 43 per cent of workers remain in agriculture and female labour-force participation is only 40 per cent (PLFS 2025). Investment concentrated in advanced states, widening regional gaps.
- Social structure: caste and gender hierarchies shape who reaches the school or clinic. NFHS-5 (2019-21) recorded 35.5 per cent of under-fives stunted and 57 per cent of women anaemic.
- Political incentives: the middle class exits to private schools and hospitals and stops pressing for public ones, while parties reward visible, attributable transfers over slow public goods.
The Kerala contrast
Kerala reached near-universal literacy and high life expectancy at modest income through social reform movements, women’s schooling, strong local government and competitive parties that made health and education electoral issues. Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh show similar public action routes. The difference is political mobilisation, not growth.
Counter-evidence
The story is slower progress, not stagnation. About 24.82 crore people escaped multidimensional poverty between 2013-14 and 2022-23 (NITI Aayog); out-of-pocket spending fell from 62.6 to 39.4 per cent of health expenditure between 2014-15 and 2021-22; institutional births reached 88.6 per cent; social-services spending is budgeted at 7.9 per cent of GDP in 2025-26. Aspirational Districts, Ayushman Bharat–PM-JAY, Jan Dhan and self-help groups have widened reach — though coverage has improved faster than learning and nutrition.
Conclusion
India’s modest social gains follow from a political choice to let growth substitute for public provisioning, combined with weak state capacity and entrenched social hierarchy. Where citizens organised to demand schools and clinics — Kerala most clearly — growth became capability. Faster growth alone will not close the gap; sustained public investment and accountability will.