Money go round will not make us wealthy.

"Despite low world prices for the commodities on which they tend to depend, many of the world's poorest economies have been doing well," wrote Prof D Rodrik. African countries, such as Senegal, Burkina Faso and Rwanda, and Asian countries like, India, Myanmar and Cambodia, are "all projected to achieve growth of 6% or higher this year". Surely not? Senegal has a GDP of $14.77 billion, Burkina Faso of $12.12 billion, Myanmar $67.43 billion and Cambodia $20.02 billion, while India's GDP is $2.25 trillion, so how can India be lumped with these tiny economies? Because India has the largest number of poor people in the world and there is no way out of poverty because manufacturing contributes only 17% of GDP, while it is 35% of GDP in Thailand, 32% in China, 30% in Philippines and 29% in Indonesia. So what? "Developing economies that manage to grow rapidly on a sustained basis without relying on natural-resources booms -- as most of these countries have for a decade -- typically do so through export-oriented industrialization." But, manufacturing is almost stagnant in India, forcing us to import everything, wrote A Ranade. Trouble is, manufacturing has become highly skilled and the rest of the world may not allow India to imitate China in growing fast through low-tech, labor intensive manufacturing because robotics and automation are gradually replacing human labor. Only 3% of Indians qualify as the global middle class, with a per-capita income of $10-$20 per day. The vast majority of Indians in the top 20% of the population consider themselves as lower middle class or poor. Whatever manufacturing we have is mostly in the informal sector, with 94.6% of non-agricultural establishments employing 5 workers or less. These businesses will be hit by the Goods and Services Tax, or GST, while larger companies will benefit, wrote M Chakravarty. Many of these small firms are suppliers of the big companies, so how they will profit from the failure of cheap suppliers is a mystery. If our growth is predicted to be in excess of 7%, despite all these negatives, then what is propelling this growth. "Labour has been moving from low-productivity agricultural activities to higher-productivity activities, but the latter are mostly in services rather than manufacturing." Sinha and Bhattacharya think that India can leapfrog over manufacturing to high tech digital services. Alibaba is to invest $15 billion on research into digital technologies. This is just one company in China. There will be some growth, "But the evidence suggests that the growth rates brought about recently by rapid structural change are exceptional and may not last," thinks Prof Rodrik. It means that we need new money from exports. Money going round in circles within India is no growth.