The advance estimate of the 2010 fiscal year growth for India’s economy is around 7.2% though it is believed that the actual number will be higher. Till now, no economist has thought of the growth to be lower than 7.2% and many actually felt it would be near 7.5%. On coming Monday, government will let the world know the growth rate of the fourth quarter which many economists believe to be around 8.7 to 9.3%. In the first 3 quarters, India has seen growth rate of 6.1%, 7.9% and 6% respectively.

Government’s support to the industry allowed the economy to grow at 7.9% in the second quarter. Growth decreased to 6% in third quarter due to the contraction of agriculture production by 2.8% and slipping of community, social and personal services by around 2.2%.

When you think about economic growth analytically, we realize that a country should be looking for balance between economic growth and development.

As we can see that growing economies like India have a high growth rate but their development rate is low. In simpler terms you can determine development rate by the amount of money/wealth that gets trickled down to poor people. This is because a high economic growth never tells us how much of that money is reaching the poor people. It is generally not advisable in a country if the rich just keep getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer. India should ensure they can turn their high economic growth to high development rate as well.