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This paper analyses poverty and calorific undernourishment in the Indian state of Gujarat, where high and market-led industrial growth has resulted in rapid economic improvement. The study is carried out through a combination of secondary and survey-based data. We conclude that the neoliberal agenda of uncontrolled, outward-looking growth has not resulted in significant reduction of poverty or malnourishment in rural areas. Furthermore, while land ownership is officially used as a proxy for wealth distribution, class position appears a better predictor of poverty status in the rural areas than landownership per se. At the policy level, there is a need to revive the agrarian economy and create new non-agricultural assets, and the primary focus in the state must shift to the distribution of created assets rather than a single-minded focus on growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sustained improvement in the underlying conditions for growth for more than two decades has resulted in lifting the Indian economy from the bottom of the growth heap to one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This paper presents the factors that have contributed to the growth acceleration in India over the past 25 years and the challenges faced by the growth process in the years ahead. The inadequate and poor quality of infrastructure, particularly electricity, the emerging scarcity of skilled labor, and a lagging agricultural sector pose serious medium-term challenges to the sustainability of high growth, while management of the macroeconomic environment poses more immediate challenges in view of the proliferation of unsustainable and sometimes invisible subsidies, sharp increases in the world prices of food and fuel, and pressure on the exchange rate executed by strong capital inflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In earlier debates on economic development, the agricultural sector's role was somewhat controversial. While dualistic models highlighted the importance of agriculture, the mainstream literature placed a greater emphasis on the creation of a modern industrial sector. Soon agriculture disappeared from the mainstream development literature to re-emerge recently with a variety of multiple-sector growth models emphasizing the key role of agriculture and specifically technology in agriculture. This article is an empirical cross-country analysis of agricultural technology's role in economic development. Specifically, the hypothesis being tested is whether improvements in agricultural technology have a significant impact on long-run economic growth. The results indicate that agricultural modernization has a positive effect on both measures of economic growth and human development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]