Analysing the growth performance of Southasian countries, a new World Bank report published in June argues that, despite some major roadblocks, the region has managed to maintain fairly high levels of growth for more than a decade. Furthermore, that the pattern of that growth has led directly to a significant reduction in poverty. Attributing this success to the reforms undertaken by regional countries, authors Shantayanan Devarajan and Ijaz Nabi claim that maintaining a 10 percent rate of growth for roughly another nine years is the key to bringing poverty levels down to single digits. But achieving steady high growth will be a challenge. Drawing out a list of possible obstacles, "Economic Growth in South Asia" suggests policy prescriptions to tackle these constraints.
This is a strange piece of work: a mix of analysis, hypothesis, make-believe and wishful thinking. While it is hard to understand the purpose of this report*, it does throw up interesting issues that must be contested
First of all, the growth indicators of SAARC countries are reviewed only for the last five years. The timeframe seems inadequate, particularly because the authors want to attribute high growth rates to policy reforms that, even according to them, the "governments undertook in the last two decades". More importantly, was it really the reforms introduced under the structural adjustment programmes that led to this growth? In that case, which specific reforms were the most crucial?
The lack of analysis in terms of connecting the reforms to the high growth, the extremely short period under review, the tendency to downplay other factors that might have helped achieve this growth – all this makes the analysis more speculative than anything else.