ECONOMIC GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Introduction

Economies grow and develop, they expand and advance, and they progress and prosper. There are phases when they decline too, and there are economies that experience continuous decay. If one considers long stretches of human history, one knows that economies (civilizations) disappeared altogether. We will not take into account such long stretches of time. We shall not consider too distant a past either. We will leave them to historians, may be, economic historians.

Let us take a normal view. We shall then accept decline as an occasional, temporary phenomenon. We shall, therefore, use positive terms only. Of the positive terms, which have been used to describe changes as well as to prescribe
Internal demand may for a variety of reasons fail to make full use of the potential. Some economists put too much emphasis on supply potential and ignore demand conditions. They define economic growth as long-term increase in production potential of the economy. Some economists feel that it is growth of per capita GDPFC, not GDPFC, that should be used to gauge the growth of an economy. But the point to be noted is that economic growth is a long-term phenomenon about the change in total economic activity of an economy.

Economic Development

Some economists hold a view that the economic development is not much different from economic growth. For them, both are processes of long-term increase in per capita income. Some other economists believe that development is distinctly different process than growth and covers other dimensions of change besides growth. Still others hold that, development is nothing but the level of per capita income achieved in a particular year. Whole human history may be thought of as a succession of developments or changes, largely in positive direction. Looking from a distance, we find that production structure of the economy has changed: from hunting-gathering to settled agriculture, from agriculture to manufacturing, from manufacturing to automatic production, from production of goods to production of services. It does not mean services were not produced, say thousand years ago; it only means that its