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Economic and institutional aspects of India’s economic development in the 21st century



TERRA ECONOMICUS,
Vol. 23,
No 1,

Citation: Čajková A., Čajka P. (2025). Economic and institutional aspects of India’s economic development in the 21st century. Terra Economicus 23(1), 103–117. DOI: 10.18522/2073-66062025-23-1-103-117

Acknowledgment: This paper was supported by the Grant KEGA 026UKF-4/2022 “India in contemporary international relations”.

This paper examines the economic and institutional aspects of India’s development in the 21st century, focusing on the analysis of the factors that determine the country’s economic growth as well as the challenges that the Indian economy currently faces. At the moment, India represents one of the most dynamically developing economies in the world, which is clearly predisposed by its positive demographic growth. India is already the most populous country in the world, which creates prospects of harnessing the labor force, as well as skilled and educated labor force, for the continuous positive economic growth of the country in the 21st century. Nevertheless, Indian GDP declined at the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century mainly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the strict lockdown and social distancing measures that were put in place to control the spread of the coronavirus. These measures led to a sharp decline in economic activity in several sectors, including manufacturing, construction, as well as services. At the same time, the Indian economy is now showing signs of recovery after the perilous year of 2021. This paper demonstrates how the Indian government has taken several measures to promote economic growth as well as various policy reforms aimed at encouraging investment and consumption for supporting the economic recovery. In this study, we also discuss the principles of institutional economics and their specificities in the case of India, in particular path dependency and others, comparing the introduced reforms and their impacts on selected indicators with China as a similarly strong and large economy.

Keywords: public policy; economic development; institutional reforms; sustainable growth; India
JEL codes: F50, F53, H50, O53, Q56


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Publisher: Southern Federal University
ISSN: 2073-6606