Comprehensive wealth and sustainable development in India

Sustainable development requires that the per capita productive base or comprehensive wealth of an economy should, at least, not decline over the period of time. This study provides estimates of the growth rate of per capita comprehensive wealth for the Indian economy for the period 1991-2006. The growth rate of per capita comprehensive wealth is estimated to be 4.39 percent whereas the growth rate of per capita GDP is 4.42 percent. We find that though the growth rate of manufactured and human capital has been more than enough to offset the decline in natural assets, thereby leading to an improvement in the productive base of the economy, the growing resource and energy use intensity remains an issue of major concern.