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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
, 10 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
1/I'm pretty worried about news I see coming out of India.

For example, it looks like India's GDP growth has been massively overstated since 2012:

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
2/That doesn't just signal government incompetence (or worse). It means that India's whole growth model is not doing so hot.

Unemployment numbers tell a similar, alarming story:
qz.com/india/1639459/…
3/In addition to economic woes, India seems to be struggling to cope with major environmental challenges - not just climate change, but local resource use issues that it really should have under control.

telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/1…
4/This doesn't mean India isn't making any progress - for example, rural sanitation looks to be proceeding well (if the numbers can be trusted).

economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india-unl…
5/The problem is that this isn't enough. And 4.5% growth isn't enough.

India has a huge population - more than the entire continent of Africa. Much of that population is still extremely poor.
6/And India is going to get absolutely hammered by global warming. In fact, it's probably happening already.

ndtv.com/delhi-news/del…
7/In the 90s and 00s, India looked like it was doing well. Growth was rapid (and probably not overstated). Poverty fell a lot. Infrastructure and manufacturing were weak, but many talked of a new growth model that could skip manufacturing and go straight to high-value services.
8/But if the new, lower growth numbers are true, it looks like India is now mired again in stagnation, much as it was before the reforms of the 90s.

Meanwhile, its leaders don't look particularly reliable:
bbc.com/news/world-asi…
9/Because of its size and poverty, what happens in India is more important than what happens in the U.S. or Europe or Australia. If India is doing badly, humanity is doing badly.
10/I don't have specific solutions to propose yet, but it seems like India's leaders - both Modi and his opponents - need to regard the country's situation as a crisis, rather than just a little rough patch.

(end)
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Noah Smith 🐇
@Noahpinion
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@Noahpinion
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