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Despite being a "star performer" in terms of economic growth, India will take at least another 34 years to achieve the 1950s' GDP level of the United States, a senior World Bank economist said in Chennai on Thursday.
"India is growing faster, but from a low base," Lant Pritchett, lead economist, World Bank, said.
He was addressing a symposium organised by The Loyola Economics Association for Development.
Assuming that Indian economy continues to maintain the current growth rate, it would take another 61 years for the country to catch up with the current economic level of the United States.
However, Pritchett said he was "bullish" on the country's growth prospects and added that India was a "rich country waiting to happen."
"India is a rich country struggling to free itself from the trappings of poverty. It should not think of itself as a poor country struggling to be modestly less poor," he said.
He said a steady economic growth was good for the country and cautioned against an accelerated pace. "The ride will be bumpy the faster it (economy) goes," the World Bank official said.
Pritchett said transition of the Indian economy to a successful economy would create social pressures. "The social process is going to be tough. Nobody is saying it will be a smooth process," he said.
However, India is also not facing the threat of an economic catastrophe as its economy is not "booming", he said, drawing a parallel with Brazil and some South Asian economies, which boomed before going bust.
The major risks facing the country are the lack of fiscal means to meet the infrastructure needs, the lagging regions (such as Bihar) in the growth process and bad infrastructure, Pritchett said.
The private sector can only fund part of the growing infrastructure requirements and a major portion must come from the public sector. This would create pressure on the fiscal deficit, he said.
On the income distribution, India fared much better than many other countries during the last decade. "India is more equal than any other growing economies. In China, income inequality has increased dramatically in the 1990s," he said.
However, in terms of absolute indicators, there has been incredible growth in living standards of a large portion of the people in China, he said, explaining that there would be "enormous social pressures as the Indian economy takes off," but still it was the better option.
On the educational front, Pritchett said the "elite education" in India was world-class. The educational inequality in India was also not the worst in the world.
However, the fact that only a few number of students go for higher education was a major obstacle. Giving an example, he said computer maker Dell employs call center professionals in India at a miniscule of the salary it would pay for a similar job in the US.
In contrast, at the managerial level, Dell was its Indian and US managers the same salaries. "This shows that at a higher scale of employment, there is shortage of personnel here. Addressing this issue is a major challenge for the government," he said.
On the comparison between India and China, he said India has been a "star performer" in the last few years while China had an "absolute spectacular performance" in the same period.
Asking India to perform like China was akin to asking "a high school kid to perform like Tendulkar, who is a superstar performer", Pritchett said.